[Note: This is a single part of what will be, by my classification, about 240 compact tribal histories (contact to 1900). It is limited to the lower 48 states of the U.S. but also includes those First Nations from Canada and Mexico that had important roles (Huron, Micmac, Assiniboine, etc.).

This history's content and style are representative. The normal process at this point is to circulate an almost finished product among a peer group for comment and criticism. At the end of this History you will find links to those Nations referred to in the History of the Iroquois.

Using the Internet, this can be more inclusive. Feel free to comment or suggest corrections via e-mail. Working together we can end some of the historical misinformation about Native Americans. You will find the ego at this end to be of standard size. Thanks for stopping by. I look forward to your comments...Lee Sultzman]

Iroquois Location

The original homeland of the Iroquois was in upstate New York between
the Adirondack Mountains and Niagara Falls. Through conquest and
migration, they gained control of most of the northeastern United
States and eastern Canada. At its maximum in 1680, their empire
extended west from the north shore of Chesapeake Bay through Kentucky
to the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; then north
following the Illinois River to the south end of Lake Michigan; east
across all of lower Michigan, southern Ontario and adjacent parts of
southwestern Quebec; and finally south through northern New England
west of the Connecticut River through the Hudson and upper Delaware
Valleys across Pennsylvania back to the Chesapeake. With two
exceptions - the Mingo occupation of the upper Ohio Valley and the
Caughnawaga migration to the upper St. Lawrence - the Iroquois did
not, for the most part, physically occupy this vast area but remained
in their upstate New York villages.

During the hundred years preceding the American Revolution, wars with
French-allied Algonquin and British colonial settlement forced them
back within their original boundaries once again. Their decision to
side with the British during the Revolutionary War was a disaster for
the Iroquois. The American invasion of their homeland in 1779 drove
many of the Iroquois into southern Ontario where they have remained.
With large Iroquois communities already located along the upper St.
Lawrence in Quebec at the time, roughly half of the Iroquois
population has since lived in Canada. This includes most of the Mohawk
along with representative groups from the other tribes. Although most
Iroquois reserves are in southern Ontario and Quebec, one small group
(Michel's band) settled in Alberta during the 1800s as part of the fur
trade.

In the United States, much of the Iroquois homeland was surrendered to
New York land speculators in a series of treaties following the
Revolutionary War. Despite this, most Seneca, Tuscarora, and Onondaga
avoided removal during the 1830s and have remained in New York. There
are also sizeable groups of Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, and Caughnawaga
still in the state. Most of the Oneida, however, relocated in 1838 to
a reservation near Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Cayuga sold their New
York lands in 1807 and moved west to join the Mingo relatives (Seneca
of Sandusky) in Ohio. In 1831 this combined group ceded their Ohio
reserve to the United States and relocated to the Indian Territory. A
few New York Seneca moved to Kansas at this time but, after the Civil
War, joined the others in northeast Oklahoma to become the modern
Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.

Population

Considering their impact on history, it is amazing how few Iroquois
there were in 1600 - probably less than 20,000 for all five tribes.
Their inland location protected them somewhat from the initial
European epidemics, but these had reached them by 1650 and, combined
with warfare, cut their population to about half of its original
number. However, unlike other native populations which continued to
drop, the Iroquois, through the massive adoption of conquored
Iroquian-speaking enemies (at least 7,000 Huron, and similar numbers
of Neutrals, Susquehannock, Tionontati, and Erie), actually increased
and reached their maximum number in 1660, about 25,000. Absorption of
this many outsiders was not without major problems - not the least of
which was the Iroquois became a minority within their own confederacy.

For the moment, the Iroquois talent for diplomacy and political unity
kept things under control, but forces which would destroy them had
been set in motion. On the positive side, the adoptions gave the
Iroquois a claim to the lands of their former enemies beyond mere
"right of conquest." Mass adoption, however, was not extended to
non-Iroquian speaking tribes, and from this point the Iroquois
population dropped. Despite the incorporation of 1,500 Tuscarora in
1722 as a sixth member of the League, the Iroquois numbered only
12,000 in 1768. By the end of the Revolutionary War, they were less
than 8,000. From that point there has been a slow recovery followed by
a recent surge as renewed native pride has prompted many to reclaim
their heritage. The 1940 census listed only 17,000 Iroquois in both
New York and Canada, but current figures approach 70,000 at about 20
settlements and 8 reservations in New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma,
Ontario, and Quebec.

Approximately 30,000 of these live in the United States. Of 3,500
Cayuga, 3,000 are in Canada as part of the Six Nations of the Grand
River Reserve near Brantford, Ontario. The 500 in the United States
live mostly on the Seneca Reservations in western New York. There are
also Cayuga among the 2,500 member Seneca-Cayuga tribe in northeastern
Oklahoma - descendents of the Mingo of Ohio. The Oneida were once one
of the smaller Iroquois tribes but currently number more than 16,000.
The largest group (almost 11,000) lives on or near their 2,200 acre
reservation west of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Another 700 still live near
Oneida, New York, but since their 32 acre reserve is so small, many
are forced to live with the nearby Onondaga. Ontario has 4,600 Oneida
split between the 2,800 Oneida of the Thames near London and the Grand
River Reserve with the Six Nations.

1,600 Onondaga still live in New York, mainly on a 7,300 acre
reservation just south of Syracuse. Another 600 are at the Grand River
Reserve in Ontario which has members from all six Iroquois tribes.
This includes 200 Tuscarora, but the majority (1,200) live on the
Tuscarora Reservation (5,000 acres) near Niagara Falls, New York. The
Seneca were once the largest tribe of the Iroquois League - the number
of their warriors equal to the other four tribes combined. Their
current enrollment stands at 9,100, 1,100 of whom are in Ontario at
Grand River. There are four Seneca Reserves in western New York:
Allegheny, Cattaraugus, Oil Springs, and Tonawanda (total 60,000
acres). There was once a fifth Seneca reservation, but only 100 of the
original 9,000 acres of the Cornplanter grant in northern Pennsylvania
remain after it was flooded by a dam project in the 1960s. The Seneca,
however, are the only Native American tribe to own an American city -
Salamanca, New York.

The Mohawk are the largest group of Iroquois with more than 35,000
members. Some estimates of pre-contact Mohawk population range as high
as 17,000 although half this is probably closer to the truth. War and
epidemic took a terrible toll, and by 1691 the Mohawk had less than
800 people. A large group of Caughnawaga live in Brooklyn
(ironworkers), but the only American Mohawk reservation is at St.
Regis on the New York-Quebec border with 7,700 members. Straddling the
border as the Akwesasne reserve, the Canadian part has a population of
5,700. Almost 12,000 Mohawk live in Ontario as Six Nations of the
Grand River, Watha Mohawk Nation, and the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte
at Tyendenaga (Deseronto) on the north shore of Lake Ontario west of
Kingston. The remainder of the Canadian Mohawk live in Quebec near
Montreal: 8,200 at Kahnawake (Caughnawaga); and 1,800 at Oka
(Kanesatake, Lac des Deaux Montagnes).

Names

Iroquois is an easily recognized name, but like the names of many
tribes, it was given them by their enemies. The Algonquin called them
the Iroqu (Irinakhoiw) "rattlesnakes." After the French added the
Gallic suffix "-ois" to this insult, the name became Iroquois. The
Iroquois call themselves Haudenosaunee meaning "people of the long
house." Other names: Canton Indians; Confederate Indians; Ehressaronon
(Huron); Five Nations; Massawomeck (Powhatan); Matchenawtowaig (Ottawa
"bad snakes"); Mengue (French); Mingo, Minqua, Mingwe (Delaware);
Nadowa, Nadowaig, Nautowa (Ojibwe "adders"); and after 1722, the Six
Nations.

Language

Iroquian - Northern. The languages of individual tribes were closely
related and, although not identical, mutually intelligible. The
greatest similarities existed between the Mohawk and Oneida and the
Cayuga and Seneca.

Sub-Nations

Five

Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca. After 1722 the
Tuscarora were added to the League as a sixth, but non-voting, member.

Villages

New York State unless otherwise noted. A number indicates more than
one village of the same name, while a tribal name shows a mixed
population.

Cayuga

Gweugwehono. Translated variously as "people of Oiogouen; where the
boats were taken out; people at the landing; or people of the mucky
land." Also referred to as "those of the great pipe."

"shirt wearing people." Not an original member of the Iroquois League,
the Tuscarora joined as a non-voting member in 1722 after they had
been forced to leave North Carolina in 1714 after a war with the
English colonists.

The name comes from "Minqua," a Delaware word meaning treacherous used
for the Susquehannock and other Iroquian-speaking tribes. The Mingo
were groups of independent Iroquois - mixed Seneca and Cayuga hunters
with a heavy percentage of descendents of Neutrals, Huron, and Erie
who had been adopted by the Iroquois during the 1650s. They settled in
Ohio and western Pennsylvania in the early 1700s and formed mixed
villages with the Delaware and Shawnee who arrived later.

Collectively, the Iroquois (mostly Mohawk but with sizeable numbers of
Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga) who, after being converted to
Christianity by French Jesuits, separated from the Iroquois League
after 1667 and settled along the St. Lawrence River near Montreal.

Simply put, the Iroquois were the most important native group in North
American history. Culturally, however, there was little to distinguish
them from their Iroquian-speaking neighbors. All had matrilineal
social structures - the women owned all property and determined
kinship. The individual Iroquois tribes were divided into three clans,
turtle, bear, and wolf - each headed by the clan mother. The Seneca
were like the Huron tribes and had eight (the five additional being
the crane, snipe, hawk, beaver, and deer). After marriage, a man moved
into his wife's longhouse, and their children became members of her
clan. Iroquois villages were generally fortified and large. The
distinctive, communal longhouses of the different clans could be over
200' in length and were built about a framework covered with elm bark,
the Iroquois' material of choice for all manner of things. Villages
were permanent in the sense they were moved only for defensive
purposes or when the soil became exhausted (about every twenty years).

Agriculture provided most of the Iroquois diet. Corn, beans, and
squash were known as "deohako" or "life supporters." Their importance
to the Iroquois was clearly demonstrated by the six annual
agricultural festivals held with prayers of gratitude for their
harvests. The women owned and tended the fields under the supervision
of the clan mother. Men usually left the village in the fall for the
annual hunt and returned about midwinter. Spring was fishing season.
Other than clearing fields and building villages, the primary
occupation of the men was warfare. Warriors wore their hair in a
distinctive scalplock (Mohawk of course), although other styles became
common later. While the men carefully removed all facial and body
hair, women wore theirs long. Tattoos were common for both sexes.
Torture and ritual cannibalism were some of the ugly traits of the
Iroquois, but these were shared with several other tribes east of the
Mississippi. The False Face society was an Iroquois healing group
which utilized grotesque wooden masks to frighten the evil spirts
believed to cause illness.

It was the Iroquois political system, however, that made them unique,
and because of it, they dominated the first 200-years of colonial
history in both Canada and the United States. Strangely enough, there
were never that many of them, and the enemies they defeated in war
were often twice their size. Although much has been made of their
Dutch firearms, the Iroquois prevailed because of their unity, sense
of purpose, and superior political organization. Since the Iroquois
League was formed prior to any contact, it owed nothing to European
influence. Proper credit is seldom given, but the reverse was actually
true. Rather than learning political sophistication from Europeans,
Europeans learned from the Iroquois, and the League, with its
elaborate system of checks, balances,, and supreme law, almost
certainly influenced the American Articles of Confederation and
Constitution.

The Iroquois were farmers whose leaders were chosen by their women -
rather unusual for warlike conquerors. Founded to maintain peace and
resolve disputes between its members, the League's primary law was the
Kainerekowa, the Great Law of Peace which simply stated Iroquois
should not kill each other. The League's organization was prescribed
by a written constitution based on 114 wampums and reinforced by a
funeral rite known as the "Condolence" - shared mourning at the
passing of sachems from the member tribes. The council was composed of
50 male sachems known variously as lords, or peace chiefs. Each
tribe's representation was set: Onondaga 14; Cayuga 10; Oneida 9;
Mohawk 9; and Seneca 8. Nominated by the tribal clan mothers (who had
almost complete power in their selection), Iroquois sachemships were
usually held for life, although they could be removed for misconduct
or incompetence. The emblem of their office was the deer antler head
dress, and guided by an all-male council, the sachems ruled in times
of peace. War chiefs were chosen on the basis of birth, experience,
and ability, but exercised power only during war.

The central authority of the Iroquois League was limited leaving each
tribe free to pursue its own interests. By 1660, however, the Iroquois
found it necessary to present a united front to Europeans, and the
original freedom of its members had to be curtailed somewhat. In
practice, the Mohawk and Oneida formed one faction in the council and
the Seneca and Cayuga the other. The League's principal sachem
(Tadodaho) was always an Onondaga, and as "keepers of the council
fire" with 14 sachems (well out of proportion to their population),
they represented compromise. This role was crucial since all decisions
of the council had to be unanimous, one of the League's weaknesses.
There was also a "pecking order" among members reflected by the
eloquent ritual language of League debate. Mohawk, Onondaga, and
Seneca were addressed as "elder brothers" or "uncles," while Oneida,
Cayuga, and Tuscarora were "younger brothers" or "nephews."

In this form, the Iroquois used a combination of military prowess and
skilled diplomacy to conquer an empire. Until their internal unity
finally failed them during the American Revolution, the Iroquois dealt
with European powers as an equal. The League was a remarkable
achievement, but it also had flaws, the most apparent was its
inability to find a satisfactory means to share political power with
its new members. As mentioned, the Iroquois incorporated thousands of
non-league Iroquian peoples during the 1650s. Political power was
retained by the original Iroquois to such an extent that the adoptees
remained second-class citizens. The resulting dissatisfaction
eventually led to the Mingo separating and moving to Ohio to free
themselves from League control. Others found refuge with the French at
Caughnawaga and other Jesuit missions along the St. Lawrence.

The League's massive adoptions also explains why it was so relentless
in its pursuit of the remnants of defeated enemies. So long as one
small band remained free, the Iroquois were in danger of an
insurrection from within. Perhaps because they considered themselves
"Ongwi Honwi" (superior people), the Iroquois never offered wholesale
adoption to the non-Iroquian speaking peoples who came under their
control. Instead they offered membership in the "Covenant Chain," a
terminology first suggested by the Dutch at a treaty signed with the
Mohawk in 1618. By 1677 the Iroquois had extended this form of limited
membership to the Mahican and Delaware and later would offer it to
other Algonquin and Siouan tribes. Essentially, the Covenant Chain was
a trade and military alliance which gave the Iroquois the authority to
represent its members with Europeans, but there was no vote or direct
representation in the League council, Worse yet, the Iroquois were
often arrogant and placed their own interests first. A system of
"half-kings" created to represent the Ohio tribes in the 1740s never
really corrected this problem.

A list of all noteworthy Iroquois would be too long to be included
here. The Seneca chief, Eli Parker (Donehogawa) was the Commissioner
of Indian Affairs during the Grant Administration. Educated as a
lawyer, he was admitted to the bar but not allowed to practice in New
York. He served on Grant's staff during the Civil War and is believed
to have written the terms of Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Catherine
Tekawitha, the Lily of the Mohawk (1656-80) has reached the final
stage before recognition as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. The
Mohawk have gained fame as structural ironworkers. Hired as laborers
in 1896 during the construction of the Dominion Bridge at Montreal,
they showed no fear of height and have since been involved in the
construction of every major bridge and skyscraper. 35 Mohawk were
among the 96 killed in 1907 when a bridge being built across the St.
Lawrence at Quebec collapsed.

History

Archeological evidence indicates the Iroquois had lived in upstate New
York for a long time before the Europeans arrived. Longhouse
construction dates to at least 1100 A.D. The maize agriculture was
introduced in the 14th century prompting a population surge and other
changes. By 1350 villages had become larger and fortified due to
increased warfare, and ritual cannibalism began around 1400. The
Onondaga were the first of the Iroquois tribes that can be positively
identified in New York and seems to have begun after the merger of two
villages sometime between 1450 and 1475. The origin of the other four
tribes is not as certain. According to Iroquois tradition, they were
once a single tribe in the St. Lawrence Valley subject to
Algonquin-speaking Adirondack who had taught them agriculture. To
escape Algonquin domination, the Iroquois say they left the St.
Lawrence and moved south to New York where they split into opposing
tribes.

The exact date of this migration is uncertain. When Jacques Cartier
first explored the St. Lawrence in 1535, there were Iroquoian-speaking
peoples living in at least eleven villages between Stadacona (Quebec)
and Hochelaga (Montreal). Hochelaga was a large fortified village with
large corn fields and a population over 3,000. It was still there
during Cartier's second visit (1541-42), but when the French returned
to the area in 1603, Hochelaga and the other Iroquois villages on the
St. Lawrence had disappeared. In their place were Montagnais and
Algonkin. For lack of a better term, these Iroquian people have been
called the Laurentian Iroquois, but their exact relationship to other
Iroquian groups has never been established. Both the Huron and Mohawk
traditions claim them as their own. Linguistic evidence tends to
support the Huron, but it is quite possible the Laurentian Iroquois
may have been part of the Mohawk.

Equally confused is the exact date of the founding of the Iroquois
League. Some estimates put this as far back as 900 A.D., but the
general consensus is sometime around 1570. There is no question,
however, that all of the Iroquoian confederacies (Neutrals,
Susquehannock, Huron, and Iroquois) were established prior to European
contact. Nor is there any dispute over why this occurred. Although
still threatened by the Adirondack after moving to upstate New York,
the greatest danger for the Iroquois was themselves. Relationships
between the tribes had deteriorated into constant war, blood feuds,
and revenge killings. In danger of self-destruction, the Iroquois were
saved by the sudden appearance of a Huron holyman known as the
"Peacemaker." Deganawida (Two River Currents Flowing Together)
received a vision from the Creator of peace and cooperation among all
Iroquois. Apparently he was hindered by either a language or speech
difficulty, but Deganawida eventually won the support of Hiawatha
(Ayawentha - He Makes Rivers), an Onondaga who had become a Mohawk war
chief.

With considerable effort, they were able to convince the other
Iroquois tribes to end their fighting and join together in a league.
Legend tells that Deganawida blotted out the sun to convince the
reluctant. A solar eclipse visible in upstate New York occurred in
1451 suggesting another possible date for these events. The formation
of the League ended the warfare between its members bringing the
Iroquois a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity. It also
brought political unity and military power, and unfortunately,
Deganawida's "Great Peace" extended only to the Iroquois themselves.
For outsiders it was a military alliance and the "Great War" against
any people with whom the Iroquois had a dispute, and during the first
130 years of the League's existence, there were very few tribes who
managed to avoid a dispute with the Iroquois.

The Iroquois were only required to maintain peace with each other, the
individual members of the League were free to pursue their own
interests, and at first, the Iroquois functioned as two alliances: the
Seneca, Cayuga, and, to a lesser extent, the Onondaga combined as the
western Iroquois; while the Mohawk and Oneida united in the east.
Despite this division, the Iroquois still possessed a unity and
purpose which their enemies could not match. During a 50-year war
beginning sometime around 1570, the eastern Iroquois drove the
Algonquin from the Adirondack Mountains and the upper St. Lawrence
River - a possible explanation of the movement of the Pequot and
Mohegan into southern New England just after 1600. There were also
skirmishes with the powerful Mahican Confederacy to the south over the
wampum trade, and most likely because they were Adirondack or Mahican
allies, the Pocumtuc in western New England were attacked by the
Mohawk in 1606. After establishing a settlement at Quebec, the French
reached west to the vicinity of Montreal in 1609. What they found
there was a war zone where it was possible to travel along the St.
Lawrence for days without seeing another human being. The Algonkin and
Montagnais were so harassed by Mohawk war parties that they usually
remained well-clear of the river.

The French only wanted to trade for fur. Their potential trading
partners, however, wanted help fighting the Mohawk which trapped the
French into winning their loyalty by jumping into someone else's war.
It must have seemed a trivial at the time, but it proved a fateful
decision. In July, 1609 Samuel de Champlain accompanied a Huron,
Montagnais, and Algonkin war party which moved south along the shores
of Lake Champlain. When they encountered Mohawk warriors, a battle
followed during which French guns broke the massed Mohawk formation
killing several war chiefs. The following year, Champlain joined
another attack against a Mohawk fort on the Richelieu River. Although
the Mohawk soon discarded mass formations, wooden body armor, and
countered French firearms by falling to the ground just before they
discharged, they were driven from the St. Lawrence after 1610. The
Algonkin and Montagnais took control of the area and its fur trade for
the next twenty years. Meanwhile, the French pushed west to the Huron
villages and, in a similar error in 1615, participated in an attack on
the Onondaga.

During the years following, the French paid dearly for their
intervention. Iroquois hostility prevented them from using Lake
Ontario and forced a detour through the Ottawa River Valley to reach
the western Great Lakes. For the moment, however, the Iroquois needed
guns and steel weapons to protect themselves, but these were available
only through a fur trade controlled by their enemies. In 1610 Dutch
traders arrived in the Hudson Valley of New York, and the Iroquois had
solved a part of their problem. Still pressed from the north by the
Huron, Algonkin, and Montagnais, the Mohawk in 1615 were also fighting
their traditional Susquehannock rivals to the south. Suspecting the
French were behind this, the Dutch helped the Mohawk against the
Susquehannock. This attached the Mohawk to the Dutch, but there were
problems. Located on the Hudson, the Mahican blocked Mohawk access to
Dutch traders unless tribute was paid to cross their territory.

This unhappy arrangement did not sit well with the Mohawk and
periodically erupted into war. Since this affected their fur trade,
the Dutch arranged a truce in 1613. Four years later, renewed fighting
between the Mohawk and Mahican forced the closure of Fort Nassau near
Albany until another peace was made in 1618. Meanwhile, the Dutch
demand for fur had created competition for previously-shared hunting
territory, and Mohawk encroachment had led to fighting and subjugation
of some the northern groups of Munsee Delaware during 1615. How long
the Dutch could have "kept the lid on" this situation is questionable.
The Mohawk were acting as middlemen for other Iroquois and had even
greater ambitions. In 1624 the Dutch built a new post at Fort Orange
which was actually closer to the the Mohawk. Unfortunately, they also
tried to take some of the St. Lawrence fur trade from the French by
using Mahican middlemen to open trade with the Algonkin.

Trade with their enemies was too much for the Mohawk, and in 1624 they
attacked the Mahican in a war the Dutch could not stop. Fighting
continued for the next four years with the Mahican calling in their
Pocumtuc and Sokoki (Western Abenaki) allies. The Dutch at first
tended to favor the Mahican. Dutch soldiers from Fort Orange joined a
Mahican war party in 1626. A Mohawk ambush resulted in several dead
Dutchmen, but rather than retaliate, the Dutch decided to remain
neutral. By 1628 the Mohawk had defeated the Mahican and driven them
east of the Hudson River. Under the terms of peace, the Mahican were
forced to pay tribute in wampum, or at least share their profits from
wampum trade with the Delaware on Long Island. The Dutch accepted the
Mohawk victory and made them their principal ally and trading partner.
The Iroquois homeland occupied a very strategic position - sitting
between the Dutch in the Hudson Valley and furs of the Great Lakes.
Already able to force the French to stay well north, the Iroquois were
ready to try to dominate the French trade on the St. Lawrence.

The result was the Beaver Wars - 70 years of violent intertribal
warfare for control of the European fur trade. Largely forgotten
today, the Beaver Wars were one of the critical events in North
America history. With the Mahican defeated and subject, the Mohawk in
1629 continued the war against the Mahican's Sokoki and Pennacook
allies. This may have continued for some time if not for the actions
of third European power, Great Britain, which had begun colonizing New
England in 1620. During a war in Europe between Britain and France,
English privateers under Sir David Kirke captured Quebec in 1629.
Without French support, the Algonkin and Montagnais were vulnerable,
and after concluding a truce with the Sokoki, the Mohawk took
advantage by destroying the Algonkin-Montagnais village at Trois
Rivieres. By late 1630 the Algonkin and Montagnais desperately needed
help against the Mohawk. For three long years none came until the
Treaty of St. Germaine en Laye restored Quebec to France in 1632.

By the time the French returned to the St. Lawrence that year, the
Iroquois (with uninterrupted trade with the Dutch) had reversed their
earlier losses and were dangerously close to gaining control of the
upper St. Lawrence and southern Ontario. The Iroquois had exhausted
most of the beaver in their homeland (they never had that many to
begin with). If they were to continue trade for the European goods on
which they become dependent, they desperately needed to find new
hunting territory. As large Iroquois war parties ranged freely through
southern Ontario and the Ottawa Valley, the French tried to restore
the balance of power in the region by selling firearms to their
trading partners for "hunting." For obvious reasons, the Europeans at
first had avoided trading firearms to the natives, although they were
pretty free with steel knives and hatchets. With growing competition
in the fur trade, however, their reluctance rapidly gave way.

Initially, the French took the precaution of restricting guns to
Christian converts and limiting the amount of ammunition to preclude
any use against themselves. Even a limited supply was sufficient at
the time to allow the Huron, Algonkin, and Montagnais to counter the
Iroquois, while the French rebuilt their fur trade. The firearms and
steel weapons, however, soon found their way into the hands of the
tribes for which the Huron acted as a middleman, and as the number of
beaver dwindled in the eastern Great Lakes, Neutral, Tionontati, and
Ottawa warriors used them to seize territory from Algonquin and Siouan
tribes in lower Michigan and the Ohio Valley. The Beaver Wars spread
westward during the 1630s and 40s. The Iroquois were Dutch allies.
Because of this and past hostility, the French continued to avoid
them. Despite a limited trade agreement concluded with the Mohawk in
1627, they concentrated their efforts on trade with the Huron who had
strong trading ties to the western Great Lakes.

Stymied by Huron military power, the Iroquois wanted their permission
to hunt in the prime beaver territory to the north and west of their
homeland so they could maintain their trade with the Dutch. At the
very least, the Iroquois needed the Huron to cooperate and trade some
of their furs with them - something the two rival confederations had
done for many years before arrival of the French and Dutch. Resorting
to diplomacy, the League sent its requests to the Huron council. The
Huron, however, sensed their growing advantage and refused. After the
Huron killed an Iroquois hunting party in disputed territory, all-out
war erupted. Although the Huron and their allies outnumbered them more
than two to one, Iroquois war parties moved into southern Ontario
trying to cut the Huron link through the Ottawa Valley to French
traders at Quebec. Some French settlements along the St. Lawrence were
also attacked in 1633, but these were never the main target. For the
most part, the Iroquois shrewdly tried to keep the French neutral,
while they eliminated their native allies.

A peace arranged with Algonkin in 1634 failed almost immediately when
the Algonkin renewed efforts to open trade with the Dutch in the
Hudson Valley. Two separate Iroquois offensives during 1636 and 1637
drove the Algonkin deep into the upper Ottawa Valley and forced the
Montagnais to retreat east towards Quebec. Smallpox from New England
in 1634 slowed the Mohawk offensive, but the Seneca inflicted a major
defeat on the Huron the following year. Between 1637 and 1641, the
Huron paid a horrendous price for European contact and fur trade when
a series of epidemics swept through their villages. When these ended,
the Huron had lost many experienced leaders and almost half their
population which seriously weakened their ability to defend themselves
against the Iroquois. When the French had begun to provide firearms to
the Huron and Algonkin, the Dutch had kept pace in supplying them to
the Iroquois. The resulting arms race had remained on a relatively low
level until the Swedes established a colony on the lower Delaware
River in 1638.

To compensate for their late start in the fur trade, the Swedes placed
few restrictions on the amount of firearms they sold to the
Susquehannock. Suddenly confronted by a well-armed enemy to the south
in Pennsylvania, the Iroquois turned to the Dutch for more and better
firearms. Already angry the Swedes had settled on territory claimed by
themselves and taken over their trade, the Dutch provided additional
guns and ammunition and in the process gave the Iroquois a definite
arms advantage over the Huron. The first victim of this new armament
was not the Huron, but the small Iroquian-speaking Wenro tribe of
western New York. Abandoned by their Erie and Neutral allies, they
were overrun by the Iroquois in 1639. Resistance continued until 1643,
but the surviving Wenro were finally forced to seek refuge with the
Huron and Neutrals. The major change came in 1640, when the other
newcomers to the fur trade, New England traders from Boston, tried to
break the Dutch trade monopoly with the Mohawk by selling them
firearms.

Although this sale would have violated British law, the Dutch started
selling the Iroquois all the guns and powder they wanted. The level of
violence in the Beaver Wars escalated dramatically, with the Iroquois,
now even better armed than the French, holding a clear advantage in
firepower. Despite this the Huron won two major victories against the
Iroquois in 1640 and 1641. but within a year, the Mohawk and Oneida
had driven the last groups of Algonkin and Montagnais from the upper
St. Lawrence. The French responded by building forts, but these proved
inadequate to protect even their own settlements which were coming
under attack. The founding of Montreal at the mouth of the Ottawa
River in 1642 shortened the distance the Huron had to travel to trade,
but the French were vulnerable to attack in this new location. The
Iroquois easily compensated during 1642 and 1643 by moving large war
parties into the Ottawa Valley to attack the French and Huron trying
to move furs to Montreal.

As if the French did not have enough trouble, a long-standing
hostility between the Montagnais and Sokoki (Western Abenaki) had
erupted into war in 1642 when the Montagnais attempted to keep the
Sokoki from trading directly with the French at Quebec. Since the
Mohawk were already at war with the Montagnais, the Sokoki put aside
past differences and formed an alliance with the Mohawk. This also
brought the Mahican (Mohawk allies since 1628) into the fighting, and
in 1645 a combined Mohawk, Sokoki, and Mahican war party raided the
main Montagnais village near Sillery, Quebec. The Dutch in 1640 had
also begun providing large quantities of firearms to the Mahican. By
1642 both the Mohawk and Mahican were using these weapons to demand
tribute from the Munsee and Wappinger Delaware on the lower Hudson. To
escape this harassment, the Wiechquaeskeck (Wappinger) moved south
during the winter of 1642-43 to Manhattan Island and the Tappan and
Hackensack villages at Pavonia (Jersey City) for what they thought was
the protection of the Dutch settlements.

The Dutch, however, became alarmed and in February, 1643 made a
surprise attack on the Wiechquaeskeck village killing more than 100 of
them. The Pavonia Massacre ignited the Wappinger War (Governor Kieft's
War) (1643-45). The fighting spread to include Munsee in New Jersey
and Unami (Delaware) and Metoac of western Long Island, and the Dutch
were forced to call upon the Mahican and Mohawk for help. After
signing a formal treaty of alliance with the Dutch that year, the
Mohawk and Mahican set to work. By the time a peace was finally signed
at Fort Orange in the summer of 1645, more than 1,600 Wappinger,
Munsee, and Metoac had been killed, and the Mohawk and Mahican had
gained control of the wampum trade of western Long Island. Munsee
resentment continued to smolder during the final 20 years of Dutch
rule, but the Mohawk stood ready to crush an uprising. Violence
finally came when five Munsee tribes combined to fight the new Dutch
settlements in the Esopus Valley. The Mohawk attacked the Munsee
villages killing hundreds, and when the Esopus War (1660-64) ended,
the Munsee had been conquered and made subject to the Iroquois.

For the French, 1644 was an especially grim year. The Atontrataronnon
(Algonkin) were driven from the Ottawa River and forced to seek refuge
with the Huron, and three large Huron canoe flotillas transporting fur
to Montreal were captured by the Iroquois. The fur trade on the St.
Lawrence had come to almost a complete halt, so the French were ready
to listen when the Iroquois proposed a truce. The peace treaty signed
in 1645 allowed the French to resume the fur trade, and the Mohawk,
who had suffered heavy losses from war and epidemic, got the release
of their warriors being held prisoner by the French. However, the
treaty failed to solve the main cause of the war. The Iroquois
expected peace would bring a resumption of their earlier trade with
the Huron. Instead, the Huron ignored Iroquois overtures for trade and
sent 60 canoe-loads of fur to Montreal in 1645 followed by 80 loads in
1646. After two years of increasingly-strained diplomacy failed to
change this, all hell broke loose.

While their diplomats took great care to reassure the French and keep
them neutral, the Iroquois destroyed the Arendaronon Huron villages in
1647 and cut the trade route to Montreal. Very few furs got through
that year. In 1648 a massive 250-man Huron canoe flotilla fought its
way past the Iroquois blockade on the Ottawa River and reached Quebec,
but during their absence, the Iroquois destroyed the Huron
mission-village of St. Joseph torturing and killing its Jesuit
missionary. This scattered the Attigneenongnahac Huron. Sensing a
complete Iroquois victory, the Dutch provided 400 high-quality
flintlocks and unlimited ammunition on credit. The final blow came
during two days in March, 1649. In coordinated attacks, 2,000 Mohawk
and Seneca warriors stuck the Huron mission-villages of St. Ignace and
St. Louis. Hundreds of Huron were killed or captured, while two more
French Jesuits were tortured to death. Huron resistance abruptly
collapsed, and the survivors scattered and fled to be destroyed or
captured.

The Iroquois, however, were not about to just let the Huron go. After
20 years of war and epidemic, they had paid a high price for victory.
Down to less than 1,000 warriors, the League had decided on massive
adoptions to refill their ranks. The "Great Pursuit" began the
following December when the Iroquois went after the Attignawantan
Huron who had taken refuge with the Tionontati. The main Tionontati
village was overrun, and less than 1,000 Tionontati and Huron managed
to escape to a temporary refuge on Mackinac Island near Sault Ste.
Marie (Upper Michigan). The Iroquois followed, and by 1651 the Huron
and Tionontati refugees (who together would become the Wyandot) were
forced to relocate farther west to Green Bay, Wisconsin. The following
spring the Nipissing suffered the same fate (survivors fled north to
the Ojibwe), and the last groups of Algonkin abandoned the upper
Ottawa Valley and disappeared into safety of the northern forests with
the Cree for the next twenty years.

Meanwhile, the Tahonaenrat Huron had moved southwest among the
villages of the Neutrals. Throughout the many wars between Iroquois
and Huron, the Neutrals had refused to take sides. Huron and Iroquois
war parties passed through their homeland to attack each other, but
the Neutrals remained neutral - hence their name. Perhaps alarmed by
the sudden Iroquois victory over the Huron, they made no effort to
prevent the Tahonaenrat from continuing to make war on the Iroquois.
After not-so diplomatic requests for the Neutrals to surrender their
"guests" were ignored, the Iroquois attacked them in 1650. For the
first year of the war, the Neutrals had the support of the
Susquehannock who had been Huron allies before 1648. However, this
ended in 1651 when the Mohawk and Oneida attacked the Susquehanna. The
main Neutral fort of Kinuka fell to the Seneca that year, and the
other Neutrals either surrendered or were overrun.

The Tahonaenrat surrendered enmass and were incorporated into the
Seneca, but large groups of Neutrals and Huron fled south to the Erie.
Their reception was less than cordial, but they were allowed to stay
in a status of semi-slavery. The "Great Pursuit" continued, and the
Iroquois demanded the Erie turn the refugees over to them. Relations
between the Iroquois and Erie apparently had never been friendly, and
reinforced with hundreds of new warriors, the Erie flatly refused. The
matter simmered for two years with growing violence. In 1653 an Erie
raid into the Iroquois homeland killed a Seneca sachem. A last minute
conference was held to avoid war, but in the course of a heated
argument, an Erie warrior murdered an Onondaga, and Iroquois
retaliated by killing all 30 of the Erie representatives. After this,
peace was impossible, and the western Iroquois prepared for war.
However, having great respect for the Erie as warriors, they first
took the precaution of arranging a peace with the French.

When the Huron were overrun in 1649, the French fur trade empire
collapsed. The Jesuits had been killed, their native trading partners
and allies destroyed or scattered, and the flow of fur stopped. The
French still encouraged the natives to come to Montreal for trade, but
very few tried with the Iroquois controlling the Ottawa River. The
offer of peace did not include the Mohawk and Oneida, but the French
grabbed at a chance to end hostilities with the other three Iroquois
tribes. With the French pacified and the Mohawk and Oneida keeping the
only possible ally, the Susquehannock, from giving any aid, the
Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga were free to deal with the Erie. Their
initial caution proved justified. Without firearms, the Erie held out
for three years until resistance ended in 1656. The survivors were
incorporated into the Iroquois.

At this point, no power in North America could have stood against the
Iroquois League, even the Europeans. However, rather than choosing to
confront the Europeans, the Iroquois decided to deal with them as
equals and use their firearms and trade goods to their own advantage.
To this end, it should be noted the Iroquois never tried to eliminate
one European power for the benefit of another. Instead, they attempted
to maintain a working relationship with each one, even the French.
Rather than being a Dutch ally, the Iroquois were in business for
themselves to dominate the fur trade with the Europeans and set about
creating an empire for this purpose. Details of how they did this have
been mostly lost, since no European was present to record what
happened. Oral traditions provide only partial answers, but
archeological evidence indicates the western Great Lakes and Ohio
Valley were rather heavily populated before contact. The first French
explorers in the area during the 1660s and 70s, however, found few
residents and many refugees.

It is also unclear how much warfare by the Huron, Neutrals, Ottawa,
Erie and Susquehannock in pursuit of beaver fur prepared the way for
the Iroquois conquest of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, but in only
ten years, the western Iroquois cleared the region of most of its
remaining native inhabitants. By 1667, the following tribes had been
forced to relocate from their original locations:

1. The Potawatomi, Fox, Sauk, and Mascouten had left lower Michigan
and were living in mixed refugee villages in Wisconsin.

2. The Shawnee, Kickapoo, and part of the Miami had been forced from
Ohio and Indiana. The Kickapoo and Miami moved to Wisconsin, but the
Shawnee scattered to Tennessee, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and South
Carolina.

3. Attacked by the Seneca in 1655 for giving refuge to Huron and
Neutrals, the Illinois were forced west of the Mississippi River. They
returned later but went no further than the Illinois River Valley
which was well to the west of their original territory.

4. The Dhegiha Sioux (Osage, Kansa, Ponca, Omaha, and Quapaw)
abandoned the lower Wabash Valley and moved west to the Missouri
River. The Quapaw, however, separated from the others, went south, and
settled at the mouth of the Arkansas.

5. The Huron, Tionontati, Wenro, Neutrals, and Erie had been defeated
and absorbed into the Iroquois. Approximately 1,000 Huron and
Tionontati who escaped capture moved first to Wisconsin, then inland
to the Mississippi in Minnesota, and finally to the south shore of
Lake Superior.

6.The Ottawa had left their original location on the islands of Lake
Huron and moved west to upper Michigan. The Nipissing and southern
bands of the Ojibwe had also been forced north to the vicinity of
Sault Ste. Marie.

7. Some tribes in the Ohio Valley just disappeared and are known only
by name: Casa, Cisca, Iskousogom, Moneton, Mospelea, Ouabano,
Teochanontian, Tomahitan, and Tramontane. Who they were and exactly
what happened to them is unknown.

While the western Iroquois were conquering the Ohio Valley, the Mohawk and
Oneida were busy in the east. In 1647 their war with the Algonkin and
Montagnais had spread to the Abenaki in Maine who were helping the
Montagnais.

The Mohawk's alliance with the Sokoki against the Montagnais ended with
fighting over hunting territory east of Lake Champlain. The sudden
collapse of the Huron in 1649 had alarmed everyone, and the French at
Quebec tried to assemble whatever allies they could against the Iroquois.
The Mohawk struck outlying French settlements and kept attacking the small
group of Christian Huron living just outside the gates of Quebec. In 1650
the French sent a Montagnais sachem and Jesuit missionary into northern
New England to encourage an alliance between the Sokoki, Pennacook,
Pocumtuc, and Mahican against the Iroquois. The New England colonies were
also asked to participate, but the British were not interested. The French
got the alliance they were seeking and began providing firearms to its
members. Despite occasional raids against the Sokoki in Vermont, the
alliance was not tested initially. The Mohawk after 1651 had all they
could handle in their war in Pennsylvania with the Susquehannock.

The Susquehannock had always been formidable warriors. In 1651 they had
been well-armed by Swedish traders from the lower Delaware River. After
four years of fighting with heavy losses to both sides, the Mohawk and
Oneida only succeeded in capturing part of the upper part of Susquehanna
River. The war was a stalemate, until the Dutch took the Swedish colonies
in 1655. Suddenly deprived of their source of weapons, the Susquehannock
asked for peace. The Mohawk readily agreed. Peace with the Susquehannock
freed the Mohawk and Oneida to turn on their enemies in western New
England, and the alliance received its first test. New fighting between
the Mohawk and Mahican concerned the Dutch, and at their insistence, the
Mahican left the alliance in 1658 and made peace with the Mohawk. However,
the Mohawk soon discovered the Mahican were arranging trade between the
Dutch and the Montagnais and Sokoki. Diplomacy failed to stop this, and in
1662 the Mohawk attacked the Mahican. Two years of war forced the Mahican
to abandon most of the Hudson Valley, including their capital at Shodac
near Albany.

Supplied by both French and British, the Sokoki, Pennacook, Pocumtuc, and
Montagnais continued fighting the Mohawk and were holding their own.
Iroquois and Algonquin war parties moved back-and-forth across western New
England attacking each other's villages. By 1660 the war had spread to
include the Abenaki in Maine who were allies of the Montagnais. After an
attack against a Mohawk village failed in 1663, the Pocumtuc found they
were running out of warriors and asked the Dutch to arrange a truce.
Nothing came of this, and in December a large Mohawk and Seneca war party
struck the main Pocumtuc village at Fort Hill (Deerfield, Massachusetts).
The assault was repulsed with the loss of almost 300 warriors, but the
battered Pocumtuc abandoned Fort Hill in the spring and sued for peace.
The Mohawk agreed, but someone (not the Pocumtuc) murdered the Iroquois
ambassadors enroute to the peace conference. The Mohawk renewed their
attacks forcing the Pocumtuc from the middle Connecticut River.

In the midst of this, the British seized New York in 1664. The Dutch
recaptured it in 1673, but it was returned to the British by the Treaty of
Westminster the following year. The important role of the Dutch in North
America ended at this point. The British concluded their own treaty of
friendship with the Mohawk in 1664 and, most importantly, left the Dutch
traders at Albany in charge of the trade essential to the Iroquois war
machine. British traders at Boston saw greater opportunity trading with
the powerful Iroquois than New England Algonquin and moved west to Albany.
Their departure left the Sokoki, Abenaki, and Pennacook without support
other than the French. No longer concerned about getting into a war with
the British, the Mohawk took advantage and began to drive the Sokoki and
Pennacook from the upper Connecticut River, one raid even reaching the
vicinity of Boston in 1665.

The French had noted the British capture of New York and their subsequent
treaty with the Mohawk. Worried the British would gain control of the fur
trade and tired of being threatened by the Iroquois, the French Crown took
formal possession of New France and in June, 1665 sent the 1,200-man
Carigan-Saliéres regiment to Canada. The French soldiers had much to
learn, and their first offensive against the Iroquois got lost in the
woods. However, during the winter of 1665-66, they invaded the Iroquois
homeland with devastating effect and burned the Mohawk villages of
Tionnontoguen and Kanagaro. By the following spring the Mohawk were asking
the English for help. The governor of New York (also concerned about
French) agreed to an alliance but only on condition the Mohawk first make
peace with Mahican and Sokoki. The Mahican were ready, but the Sokoki
refused. That summer, the Mohawk struck the Pennacook, while the Sokoki
and Kennebec attacked Mohawk villages.

The French army resumed their attacks in the fall but ran into a Mohawk
ambush. The attacks still had their effect, and the Iroquois agreed to a
general peace with the French in 1667. This freed the western Iroquois to
concentrate on the still-dangerous Susquehannock while the Mohawk went
after western New England. During 1668 the Mohawk drove the Pennacook
across New Hampshire to the protection of the Abenaki in Maine. The
following year an alliance of New England Algonquin (including Sokoki and
Mahican) retaliated, but the attack on a Mohawk village was ambushed on
their return home. With the exception of Missisquoi on the north end of
Lake Champlain, by the time peace was arranged in 1670, most Sokoki were
living under French protection along the St. Lawrence. The peace the
Mahican agreed to in 1672 with the Iroquois was actually surrender.
Afterwards, the Iroquois handled all Mahican relations with Europeans. In
1677 the Mahican became the first member of the Covenant Chain.

The alliance of the British and Iroquois served to protect both from the
French. It also gave the Iroquois the support of the British in extending
its authority over other tribes by gathering them into the Covenant Chain
which greatly increased the League's power and influence. There were
several advantages for the British: it kept the Covenant Chain tribes from
falling under French influence; negotiations with Native Americans were
simplified since the British only had to deal with the Iroquois; and it
also allowed the British to call upon the League a "policeman" in case of
trouble. When the Wampanoag tried to use the Mahican village at
Schaghticoke as a refuge during the King Philip's War (1675-76), the
governor of New York called on the Mohawk to force them back to
Massachusetts. The Mohawk later helped New England force Philip's Sokoki
and Pennacook allies to retreat into northern Maine and Canada.
Unfortunately, this also drove these peoples into an alliance with the
French.

After destroying the Erie in 1656, the western Iroquois had turned on the
Algonquin in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes and driven them west of Lake
Michigan. The peace the French had signed with the western Iroquois in
1653, had not given the French access to the western Great Lakes and left
them besieged in Montreal and Quebec by the Mohawk and Oneida. What little
fur reached them came from the Ottawa who, after the destruction of the
Huron, had assumed the middleman's role in trade with the French. This
eventually annoyed the Iroquois, and they attacked the Ottawa living on
the islands of Lake Huron forcing them west to Wisconsin and upper
Michigan. The only French to visit the western Great Lakes during this
period were Radisson and Groseilliers who reached the west end of Lake
Superior in 1658 (only to be arrested when they returned to Quebec for
trading without a license). The French peace with the Iroquois came to an
end in 1658 with the murder of a Jesuit ambassador, and it was not until
1665 that Nicolas Perot and Father Claude-Jean Allouez (6 French and 400
Huron, Ottawa, and Ojibwe) fought their way up the Ottawa River and made
their way to Green Bay.

What they found was appalling. More than 30,000 refugees (Fox, Sauk,
Ottawa, Mascouten, Miami, Kickapoo, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi) had
overwhelmed both the resident Winnebago and Menominee and the resources of
the area. Too far north for growing corn, the area was over-hunted, and
the starving refugees were fighting among themselves over the little that
was left. War had also started with the Dakota (Sioux) to the west as
Algonquin hunters encroached on their territory. The refugees were also
subject to periodic attacks by the Iroquois whose "Great Pursuit" had
followed the Wyandot to Wisconsin. In 1653 the Seneca had attacked a
Wyandot and Potawatomi fort near Green Bay, but the Iroquois were forced
to withdraw after they ran out of food. The Wyandot
retreated inland to
the Mississippi and finally to the south shore of Superior. However, the
Iroquois continued to strike without warning. A Fox village had been
destroyed in 1657, although in 1662 the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Nipissing
surprised and annihilated a large Mohawk and Oneida war party at Iroquois
Point (east end of Lake Superior).

The peace signed between the French and Iroquois in 1667 was significant.
It not only included all five members of the Iroquois League but extended
to French allies and trading partners in the western Great Lakes. The
relentless Iroquois pursuit of the Wyandot ended, and the French were able
to rebuild their fur trade. French traders and Jesuit missionaries
immediately went west and began to bring some order to the chaos in
Wisconsin. The French were also able to explore the Ohio Valley for the
first time in 1669 which provided the basis for their later claim to the
area. The Iroquois, of course, already claimed it by right of conquest.
Marquette and Joliet reached the Mississippi in 1673, and LaSalle claimed
Louisiana for France in 1682. More importantly, as fur began to reach the
markets at Montreal and Quebec once again, the French became the mediator
in intertribal disputes - the first step towards organized Algonquin
resistance to the Iroquois.

While the French used the peace to rebuild, the British became
increasingly concerned with French military power and expansion. When they
began to increase their own military strength, the stage was set for the
100-year struggle between Britain and France for control of North America.
For the Iroquois, the events of 1664-67 changed the manner in which the
League functioned. By 1677 the Iroquois had signed their first treaties as
the "Five Nations," and members afterwards rarely negotiated separate
treaties or conducted their own wars. Relations with European powers grew
more complex, and the League found it necessary to first resolve its
internal differences in order to present a united front to outsiders. The
peace signed with the French in 1667 also had advantages for the Iroquois.
They settled in the old Huron homeland of southern Ontario - uninhabited
since 1650. While men had fought each other, the beaver were at peace, and
the area had recovered to once again become a prime fur area.

It also freed the western Iroquois for a war with the one
Iroquian-speaking neighbor who had remained independent of the League. The
Susquehannock's long war against the Mohawk and Oneida had barely ended in
1655, when a new conflict began with the Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga. The
western Iroquois found them just as stubborn as had the Mohawk.
Outnumbered three-to-one, the Susquehannock enlisted support from their
tributary Algonquin and Siouan tribes (Shawnee, Delaware, Nanticoke,
Conoy, Saponi, and Tutelo), and although they had lost the Swedes in 1655,
alliances with Maryland colonists in 1661 and 1666 provided the necessary
weapons. The Mohawk had their own wars in the tribes in New England and
continued to honor their peace with the Susquehannock. The Mohawk,
however, helped the Dutch during the Esopus War and, in crushing the
Munsee Delaware, deprived the Susquehannock of one of their allies in 1664.

The Susquehannock concentrated in a single impregnable fort for defense,
so the Iroquois went after their allies and attacked the Delaware living
along the Delaware River during the 1660s. The Shawnee also came under
attack and were scattered. The pursuit of these Susquehannock allies south
into South Carolina and Tennessee soon had Iroquois war parties fighting
with Cherokee and Catawba. In the end the Susquehannock were just too few.
The greatest blow, however, was not military defeat but epidemic when
smallpox struck their single, crowded village with devastating effect in
1661. When the western Iroquois were free to prosecute the war with their
full strength in 1668, the Susquehannock had only 300 warriors. Still,
they continued to fight for another seven years, and it was not until 1675
that the Iroquois were finally able to force their surrender.

The first phase of the Beaver Wars ended with the Iroquois conquest of the
Susquehannock. During the next ten years, the Iroquois finished off the
last of their Nanticoke and Conoy allies and incorporated them into the
Covenant Chain. Maryland made peace with the League in 1682, but raids
(which had begun in 1671) against the Saponi and Tutelo in Virginia and
the Catawba in South Carolina continued. Iroquois power reached its peak
in 1680. By this time they had won a vast empire, and their warriors had
fought battles in every state east of the Mississippi. They never crossed
this river, but the Iroquois already knew trails leading to South Dakota's
Black Hills. After their war with the Susquehannock, the Iroquois turned
their attention west again, but were unhappy with what they saw. With
peace in the region after 1667, the French fur trade was going well, and
the Algonquin had, for the most part, stopped fighting each other.

It had not been a perfect peace - the Seneca had attacked Mackinac in 1671
and the Dakota were fighting the Ojibwe and Fox along the shores of
Superior, but it was a major improvement over the chaos the French had
discovered in 1665. In 1680 Robert LaSalle had opened Fort Crèvecoeur on
the upper Illinois River to trade with the tribes of the Illinois
Confederation, and thousands of Algonquin had gathered in the vicinity.
This many potential enemies bothered the Iroquois, but of greater concern
were Illinois hunters moving into Ohio, Indiana and lower Michigan
(claimed by the Iroquois) and taking every beaver they could. Since this
included the young beaver, there was no breeding stock to replace the ones
killed. Iroquois protests resulted the murder of a Seneca sachem by the
Illinois at an Ottawa village beginning the second phase of the Beaver
Wars in 1680.

Back in western New York, the Seneca formed an enormous war party and
started west to teach the Illinois a lesson they would never forget.
Enroute they added warriors from the Miami (Illinois enemies) and set out
for the Illinois villages near Fort Crèvecoeur. Warned of their approach,
the French evacuated their trading post and left for Wisconsin. Most of
the Illinois also moved to safety west of the Mississippi, but the Tamora,
Espeminkia, and Maroa chose to remain - a fatal mistake. After the Seneca
had finished their deadly work, the French returned to find the valley
littered with bodies and burned villages. Thousands of Illinois had been
massacred. Only a few Tamora and Maroa survived, and the Espeminkia
disappeared completely. The Seneca returned in 1681, but Henri Tonti built
Fort St. Louis on the upper Illinois during 1682, and the new stronghold
brought the Illinois back from west of the Mississippi. Meanwhile, the
Miami had allowed Shawnee (Iroquois enemies) to settle in their midst.
Threatened by the Iroquois over this, they switched sides and allowed the
French to arrange a peace with Illinois allowing the Miami to move closer
to the French fort.

By 1684 the native population near Fort St. Louis had grown to more than
20,000. The Iroquois returned in force that year, but the Algonquin stood
and fought. The Iroquois siege failed to capture the fort, and they were
forced to retreat - the turning point of the Beaver Wars. Elated by this
victory, the French began to organize a formal alliance against the
Iroquois. The first offensive failed so miserably, that Joseph La Barre,
the French governor of Canada, panicked and signed a treaty with the
Iroquois ceding most of Illinois. La Barre was replaced by Jacques-Rene
Denonville who renounced the treaty, built new forts, strengthened old
ones, and provided guns to the Great Lakes Algonquin. The strengthened
alliance (Ojibwe, Ottawa, Wyandot, Potawatomi, Missisauga, Fox, Sauk,
Miami, Winnebago, Menominee, Kickapoo, Illinois, and Mascouten) took the
offensive in 1687. Following important alliance victories in massive
battles fought between canoe fleets on Lake St. Clair and Erie, the
Iroquois were clearly on the defensive by the 1690s and falling back
across the Great Lakes towards New York. By 1696 the Iroquois had been
forced to abandon most of their southern Ontario villages to the
Missisauga (Ojibwe) and, except for eastern Ohio and northern
Pennsylvania, had retreated to their homeland.

The last part of the Beaver Wars coincided with King William's War
(1688-97) between Britain and France. This meant warfare was not confined
just to the Great Lakes, and in 1687 the French had struck the Seneca and
Onondaga villages in the Iroquois homeland. More than 1,200 Iroquois
warriors retaliated in August, 1689 with a massive raid against Lachine
just outside Montreal which killed more than two hundred French settlers.
The following year the French and and their allies attacked Schenectady.
The Mohawk attacked the Sokoki at St. Francois (the main French ally in
the east) in 1690 and 1692, but three separate campaigns launched from
Quebec by Louis Frontenac 1693-96 carried the war to the Iroquois
villages. Under intense pressure from both the east and west, smallpox
broke out among the Iroquois in 1690. The Iroquois made overtures for a
separate peace to the French in 1694, but these were ignored because the
offer did not include French allies.

The Treaty of Ryswick, which ended the war between Britain and France in
1697, placed the League under British protection (not something the
Iroquois had requested). The French worried their continuing war with the
Iroquois might bring another confrontation with the British and began to
consider the Iroquois peace offers with greater interest. However, their
first attempts to urge a settlement on their allies created suspicion that
they would abandon their allies and make a separate peace. There was good
reason for the Algonquin to feel this way since the Iroquois had already
attempted to break the alliance with offers of peace and trade to the
Ottawa and Wyandot. The main problem was the return of prisoners taken and
adopted by the Iroquois. Sensing the League was about to collapse, the
Algonquin wanted total victory, and the fighting continued until 1701.

The peace signed with the Iroquois that year included both the French and
their allies. The French agreed to mediate any disputes which might arise
between the League and Algonquin, while the Iroquois promised to remain
neutral in any future war between Britain and France. That future war
would start that very year - Queen Anne's War (1701-13). In their hurry to
insure Iroquois neutrality before the outbreak of hostilities, the French
neglected to extinguish Iroquois claims to the Ohio Valley in favor of
their own, and the British would soon claim this area since the Iroquois
were supposedly under their protection. For the most part, the Iroquois
had been a British ally during the King William's War, but only to the
extent they were engaged in a separate war with the French. Fighting
during the Queen Anne's War was mostly in New England and Canadian
Maritimes, and keeping its word, the League remained neutral and waited to
see who won.

Not everything was peaceful, however. The powerful Missisauga expanded
south along the shores of Lake Huron into southern Ontario and seized
territory from the Iroquois. Concerned with other matters, the French
ignored the League's protests about this, and by 1713 the Iroquois were
considering an invasion of Canada. Fortunately, the Queen Anne's War ended
with the Treaty of Utrecht that year, and the French finally got around to
mediating a settlement. This dispute, however, was one of the least of
their problems. France had emerged from the King William's War as the
winner in North America. It then proceeded to discard the fruits of its
victory. A glut of beaver fur in Europe had caused a drastic drop in
price, and the French monarchy suddenly "got religion." For years, the
Jesuits had been protesting the destruction which the fur trade was
causing among Native Americas, but no one listened until a drop in price
made fur unprofitable.

A royal proclamation was issued curtailing fur trade in the western Great
Lakes. Realizing the disaster this was for the Algonquin alliance,
Frontenac, the governor of Canada, delayed implementation to such extent
he was removed. His successor obediently closed forts and trading posts,
and the French surrendered their main source of power and influence -
trade goods and presents. Their hard-won alliance in the Great Lakes
quickly began to unravel. The Iroquois may have been down in 1701, but
certainly not out, and they immediately sensed the French dilemma. Still
controlling access to British and Dutch traders at Albany, they proceeded,
after military force had failed them, to attack the French with trade.
Even before the peace was signed in 1701, the Iroquois had used trade with
the British as a weapon to break the unity of the alliance. When the
French finally put the proclamation into effect, Iroquois traders went to
work.

The French responded in 1701 to this challenge from the "neutral" Iroquois
with a new post at Detroit, Fort Pontchartrain. Just about every tribe in
the French alliance immediately moved nearby, and the resulting frictions
placed further strains on the alliance. The French lost control, and the
tense situation exploded in 1712 when the Fox attacked Fort Pontchartrain.
The Fox Wars (1712-16 and 1728-37) marked a period of intertribal warfare
between members of the French alliance. Living under the "Great Peace,"
the Iroquois must have enjoyed the spectacle of their enemies fighting
among themselves. They continued to make inroads into the French trade
empire with British trade goods which were not only of higher quality than
the French, but lower in price. The Ottawa began to trade with the
Iroquois and British in 1717, and other French allies followed. By the
time the French rescinded the royal degree, it was too late. The Iroquois
allowed the British in 1727 to build Fort Oswego in their homeland to
shorten the travel distance for the Great Lakes tribes. By 1728, 80% of
the beaver on the Albany market was coming from French allies.

The British accepted Iroquois neutrality after 1701 but still found them
useful as a buffer between themselves and French Canada. With the French
alliance in disarray, the Iroquois soon realized they represented the
balance of power between the British and French in North American. By
taking advantage of this fact until the final French defeat in 1763, they
managed to maintain their power and independence. A remarkable
achievement, and the diplomatic skills they demonstrated were at least the
equal of any European statesman. While they weakened the French with
economic warfare, the Iroquois used British fear of French influence among
Native Americans in the British colonies to gain support for the Covenant
Chain. The British government actually pushed these tribes into joining,
and membership eventually included (at different times): Shawnee, Miami,
Delaware, Conestoga (Susquehannock), Nanticoke, Saponi, Tutelo, Munsee,
Mahican, Conoy (Piscataway), Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Catawba, and
Chickasaw.

The League's actual power to speak for some tribes was far from absolute.
No amount of threat and intimidation could force the Chickasaw, Creek,
Cherokee, Catawba, or Choctaw to submit to the League's authority, and
Iroquois attempts to enforce their will often led to warfare. Perhaps the
Covenant Chain's worst feature was the Iroquois often placed their own (or
British) interests ahead of tribes they were supposed to represent. An
exception was the Iroquois threat of intervention on behalf of the
Tuscarora during the Tuscarora War (1712-13) with the Carolina colonists.
The Iroquois stopped short of a war but remained defiant. In 1714 they
allowed the Iroquian-speaking Tuscarora to join them in western New York,
and for years afterwards Iroquois war parties went south to punish the
Catawba for helping the British against the Tuscarora. By 1722 the
Tuscarora had become the sixth, but non-voting, member of the Iroquois
League. Four years later, the Iroquois began to secretly organize a
massive uprising by all tribes east of the Mississippi against the French
and British. The response from other tribes, however, was mostly negative,
and the idea was dropped.

The political unity of the Iroquois was the source of their power, but it
was by no means perfect. Divisions appeared over religion after French
Jesuit missionaries began to make regular visits to Iroquois villages
during the 1640s. This proved to be very dangerous work for the
"blackrobes". Suspicion of French in general and smallpox in particular
frequently caused the Iroquois to protect themselves from what they
perceived as witchcraft, with fatal results for the priest. However, the
Jesuits kept coming and began to make converts. The mission of St. Marie
was established at the Mohawk village of Teatontaloga in 1642 but was
destroyed three years later during an epidemic. Father Jogues was warned
to stay away, but he attempted to rebuild the mission and was murdered in
1643. Despite this, missionary work resumed among the Mohawk, but it was
the League's incorporation of large numbers of Christian Huron,
Tionontati, and Neutrals during the 1650s which really opened the door for
the Jesuits.

Through the efforts of Father Le Moine, Notre Dame de Ganentaa, the first
mission among the Onondaga was opened in 1654. Two years later Father René
Ménard built Etienne for the Cayuga, and separate missions were also
established for the Seneca and Oneida in 1656. As the number of converts
rose, there was increasing conflict between traditional and Christian
Iroquois. Meanwhile, the French had signed a peace with the western
Iroquois but still avoided trade with them, preferring to get their furs
from the Ottawa. As tensions increased, the French tried using Jesuits as
go-betweens in dealings with the League. This made the Jesuits appear
partisan to the Iroquois, and following the murder in 1658 of a Jesuit
serving as a French ambassador, peace between the French and Iroquois
ended. Most of the missions were abandoned temporarily. With renewed
hostilities, the Iroquois began to question the loyalty of Christian
tribesmen pressuring them to renounce their new religion and return to
traditional Iroquois ways. Many did, but others were forced from the
Iroquois villages. Eventually, many left entirely and settled near the
French in the St. Lawrence Valley.

The first of these settlements was at La Prairie near Montreal. In 1667
the Jesuits convinced some Christian Oneida to spend the winter. More
Oneida and several Mohawk families came later, and other Christian
Iroquois followed. This new Iroquois settlement grew very rapidly, but the
soil at La Prairie proved unsuitable for corn. In 1673 they moved a short
distance to Sault St. Louis (Lachine) calling the new village Caughnawaga.
The Caughnawaga population was mixed (at one point it included Huron from
Notre Dame de Foy), but the vast majority were Mohawk. By 1680 more Mohawk
warriors were living near the French at Caughnawaga than in the Mohawk
homeland. Although many had been forced to leave their homeland over
religion, the Caughnawaga Mohawk still observed the "Great Law of Peace"
and remained neutral in wars between the French and the Iroquois League.
This changed with the massive Iroquois raid against the French at Lachine
in 1689, after which the Caughnawaga entered the war as French allies.

During the remainder of the war, Caughnawaga warriors participated in the
French retaliatory raids against Albany and Schenectady and even guided
French expeditions against the Iroquois homeland. However, the "Great
Peace" was still observed, and Iroquois and Caughnawaga warriors took care
to avoid confrontations where they would have to kill each other. The
Caughnawaga paid a high price for their support of the French in the King
William's War, and by 1696 they had lost half of their warriors. The
French war with the Iroquois League dragged on until 1701, but the
Caughnawaga were instrumental in arranging the terms of the peace treaty
signed that year. While the Iroquois League agreed to remain neutral in
future wars between Britain and France, no such restrictions were placed
on the Caughnawaga. By the outbreak of the Queen Anne's War, the
Caughnawaga had allied with the Abenaki, and as French allies, their joint
war parties raided New England. The worst blows were in Massachusetts.
Deerfield was destroyed in February, 1704 (59 killed and 109 captured),
and Groton burned in 1710.

The Iroquois have often described as a British ally during the four major
conflicts between Britain and France. In truth, after 1701, more Iroquois
were fighting for the French than British. The League (except the Mohawk)
was neutral in these conflicts, while the Caughnawaga were a major French
ally. The original Caughnawaga grew so rapidly part of the population
moved across the St. Lawrence in 1676 to start a second village at
Kanesatake. By 1720 the Lake of the Two Mountains mission was built for
the Iroquois of the Mountain who would become the modern Mohawk community
of Oka. Caughnawaga was moved slightly in 1716 to its present location
after soil at the old site became exhausted. Other sites were added as the
number of pro-French Iroquois along the St. Lawrence continued to grow:
Sault Recollet in 1721; Oswegatchie and the La Presentation mission
(Ogdensburg, New York) in 1748 for the Onondaga, Oneida, and Cayuga; and
St. Regis in 1756 to relieve overcrowded conditions among the Mohawk at
Caughnawaga.

Besides the defection of most of the Christian Iroquois to the French
along the St. Lawrence, the League was further weakened when another
portion of its population began moving to the Ohio Valley. The massive
adoptions of the 1650s had actually made the original Iroquois a minority
within the League, but they had retained political power since
representatives to the League's council were chosen from certain "royal"
families, all of which were part of the original Iroquois. For the most
part, this excluded adoptees from positions of authority, and this
second-class status caused dissatisfaction. Rather than outright revolt,
many chose to separate themselves from the League. Groups of Iroquois
hunters, mainly Seneca and Cayuga, but to a large degree descendents of
adopted Huron Susquehannock, Neutrals, and Erie, began to move to Ohio and
western Pennsylvania during the 1720s and establish permanent villages
outside the Iroquois homeland. By the 1730s their numbers had become
significant, and the British traders had started calling them by a
corrupted form of their Delaware name - Mingo.

The Iroquois League made little objection to the Mingo migration so long
as they continued to acknowledge its authority. Actually, it was to the
League's advantage to have tribesmen living there to keep the French and
their Algonquin allies from claiming the Ohio Country. The Iroquois did
not object when part of the Wyandot left Detroit and settled along the
Sandusky River in northwest Ohio. Instead, the Iroquois saw an opportunity
to lure an important member of the Great Lakes alliance from the French
and into the Covenant Chain. Within a few years, Wyandot ambassadors
routinely spoke in the League's councils (a major change from the days of
the "Great Pursuit") and were considered by other tribes in the area as
the de facto Iroquois viceroy of Ohio. By 1740 there were almost a
thousand Mingo living in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Although
considered part of the Iroquois, they had begun to think and act like a
separate tribe.

From its peak of 25,000 in 1660, Iroquois population had gone into a
steady decline from war and epidemic to about 14,000 by 1740. The 1,500
Tuscarora added in 1722 did not compensate for the defection of 1,000
Mingo to Ohio and 2,000 Caughnawaga to Canada. Both the British and French
were aware of this decline, but on paper the Iroquois were still
formidable because of the Covenant Chain. As mentioned, the League often
abused its responsibility to represent member tribes, and there never was
a clearer example than its support of the British in the infamous Walking
Purchase in 1737. Pennsylvania "discovered" an old treaty supposedly
signed by the Delaware which gave it the right to claim a large part of
the remaining Delaware homeland. Through fraud and trickery, the colonists
enlarged the claim to include almost all of the land the Delaware had
left. As members of the Covenant Chain, the Delaware turned to the League
for help.

What they got instead was intimidation and insult. Furious the Delaware
had dared to sell land without their permission, the Iroquois took the
bribes offered by Pennsylvania and supported the British. The Delaware
continued to protest, but at a 1742 meeting with the Pennsylvania
governor, the Iroquois representative Canasatego silenced the Delaware
sachem Nutimus as he rose to complain about the Walking Purchase, called
the Delaware women, and ordered him to leave. This left the Delaware and
some Shawnee landless. The Iroquois ordered them to the upper Susquehanna
in north-central Pennsylvania where the League was running its own "Indian
reservation" for Covenant Chain tribes displaced by British settlement.
The Iroquois were generous to provide land for these tribes but
self-serving to the extent it gave them additional warriors in case of war
with the French. In any case, the Susquehanna was crowded and deadly from
malaria which had been introduced to the area after 1700.

The Shawnee hunting parties were the first to leave for western
Pennsylvania and Ohio. When the Mingo living there made no objection and
even shared their villages, the Shawnee became permanent residents and
invited the Delaware to join them. Between 1742 and 1749, many Delaware
left the Susquehanna and moved west to form mixed villages with the
Shawnee and Mingo. Once again, the League did not oppose this migration
because the presence of Covenant Chain tribes in western Pennsylvania only
strengthened their claim versus the French and their allies. The Wyandot
soon extended an invitation for the Shawnee and Delaware to settle in
Ohio, and the Mingo, as part of the Iroquois, were already living there.
The "republics," or mixed Mingo-Delaware-Shawnee (Ohio tribes) villages
which formed, were outside the French alliance, but what the Iroquois and
British did not realize at first was that they were also outside their own
control. By 1750 the "republics" had a population of 10,000 with 2,000
warriors and had become a power to be reckoned with.

Trade competition in Ohio had been building with the British gaining on
the French by virtue of superior goods and lower prices. Three powers
claimed the area: the Iroquois by right of conquest during the 1650s and
60s; the French by right of discovery in the 1670s; and the British since
the Iroquois were placed under their protection by the Treaty of Ryswick
in 1696. The key to control of the area, however, were the Ohio tribes who
lived there. The French realized this and began efforts to gain their
allegiance. For the most part, the Ohio tribes did not wish to become
subject to anyone - French, British, or Iroquois. The French had some
success using the Métis Pierre Chartier to lure some of the Shawnee to
their cause as well as the Cuyahoga Mingo. This was enough, however, to
alarm the British who urged the Iroquois to command the Delaware and
Shawnee to return to the Susquehanna. When the League council finally
agree to this, it was stunned to discover its orders were ignored, and the
Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo stayed right where they were and refused to
leave.

With the outbreak of the King George's War (1744-48) between Britain and
France, only the Mohawk, due to the influence of the British trader,
William Johnson, supported the British. The League itself chose to remain
neutral which was fortunate for the British, since at the time, the
Iroquois were angry with them and could easily gone over to the French.
Both Pennsylvania and Virginia had chosen to interpret the Treaty of
Lancaster (1744) as an Iroquois cession of Ohio to themselves, when all
the League had intended was to give permission for the British to build a
trading post at the forks of the Ohio River (Pittsburgh). Pennsylvania and
Virginia ignored the League's protests and both claimed the entire region.
Pennsylvania's claim was more modest and extended only to eastern Ohio,
but Virginia's included the entire Ohio Valley west to the Illinois River
including Kentucky and lower Michigan.

As with the Queen Anne's War, most of the fighting during the King
George's War was confined to New England and the Canadian Maritimes. The
Caughnawaga were not only loyal to the French but allies of the Sokoki and
Abenaki. When Dummer's War (1722-26) had broken out between the eastern
Abenaki and New England, it was followed shortly by a separate, but
related, conflict in western New England - Grey Lock's War (1723-27).
Beyond supplying weapons and refuge in Canada, the French never became
directly involved, but the Caughnawaga joined the Sokoki in their raids
against western New England. The British asked the Iroquois to intervene,
but the League was no longer willing to be a British "policeman," mainly
because of a reluctance to become involved in fighting with the
Caughnawaga - a violation of the "Great Peace." They did, however, ask the
Abenaki to stop and offered to mediate.

Twenty years later, the Caughnawaga - who claimed western Vermont as part
of their homeland - had 250 warriors and stood by the French during the
King George's War. In 1744 they formed war parties with the Sokoki and
Abenaki to raid the British settlements in southern Vermont and New
Hampshire. Much of the New England frontier had to be abandoned during the
next four years. In August, 1746 Fort Massachusetts on Hoosac River was
captured, and almost all of the settlement on the east of the Hudson River
in New York also had to be abandoned as a result. The Mohawk fought for
the British, but after one of their raids struck just south of Montreal,
the Caughnawaga and other Canadian Iroquois formally declared war on the
British colonies in 1747. The war finally ended with the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.

There was little fighting in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes during the
war and was limited to pro-French Shawnee and Mingo attacks on British
traders. Otherwise, the French allies (Ottawa, Menominee, Winnebago,
Illinois, Saulteur and Mississauga Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Wyandot) sent
their warriors east to Montreal to defend Canada against the British.
Despite the lack of combat, the war was a disaster for the French in the
west after the British began a naval blockade of Canada in 1745. This
completely cut the supply of French trade goods, and without these, the
French alliance fell apart by 1747. French traders without goods were
killed, and British were quick to take advantage of the situation. By
war's end, British traders had entered Ohio and were trading directly with
French allies like the Wyandot and Miami.

All of which boded well for the Iroquois and British to keep the French
out of Ohio and western Pennsylvania. A major concern was the refusal of
the Shawnee and Delaware to obey the League's order to return to the
Susquehanna. Something needed to be done about this. At the Treaty of
Lancaster with the Iroquois, Shawnee and Delaware (and indirectly - Mingo)
in 1748, Pennsylvania urged the Iroquois to restore the Ohio tribes to the
Covenant Chain as a barrier against the French. The Iroquois created a
system of half-kings - special Iroquois emissaries (usually Mingo), one
for the Shawnee and one for the Delaware - to represent the Ohio tribes in
the Iroquois council. This regain the allegiance of the Delaware and
Shawnee to the League. When the French sent Pierre-Joseph Céloron in 1749
to expel British traders and mark the Ohio boundary with lead plates, his
reception was openly hostile. Two years later, Chabert de Joncaire
travelled through Ohio demanding the expulsion of British traders, and the
Mingo wanted to know by what authority the French were claiming Iroquois
land.

Of course, the French were not the only Europeans claiming Iroquois land
in the Ohio Valley. After the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster, Virginia had
chartered the Ohio Company in 1747 to begin settlement around Pittsburgh.
Investors included most of the important families of Virginia, including
Lawrence Washington, the older half-brother of George. Pennsylvania had
similar plans, and to the Iroquois it appeared the British and French were
two thieves fighting over their land. It also did not help matters that
the British had reduced annual presents to the Iroquois after the King
George's War. The French, however, felt they were losing Ohio and decided
on drastic action. In June, 1752 the Métis Charles Langlade led a war
party of 250 Ottawa and Ojibwe from Mackinac in an attack which destroyed
the Miami village and British trading post of Pickawillany (Piqua, Ohio).
The French allies ended trade with the British, and after apologies,
rejoined the French alliance. Immediately afterwards, the French began
building a line of new forts across western Pennsylvania designed to block
British access to Ohio.

The Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware had no wish to fall under French control
and turned to the Iroquois to stop this. Deciding the French were an
immediate threat, the Iroquois cast their lot with the British and signed
the Logstown Treaty in 1752 confirming their earlier cession of Ohio at
Lancaster in 1744. They also gave permission for the British to build a
blockhouse at Pittsburgh. This was not even completed before French
soldiers forced its surrender and burned it. In December, 1753 Governor
Dinwiddie of Virginia sent 21-year-old militia major George Washington to
Fort Le Boeuf to order the French to abandon their forts and leave Ohio.
The French commander received Washington with perfect courtesy but refused
the demand. He also warned him not to come back.

The following May Washington was sent west again with a detachment of 130
militia guided by Mingo warriors under Half-King (Tanacharisson) and
Monacatoocha (Scarrooyady). His mission was to force the surrender of Fort
Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio, but he never got there. Enroute they
got into a fight with 50 French soldiers commanded by Joseph Villier de
Jumonville. Jumonville was killed in the brief engagement, and with the
French in pursuit, Washington beat a hasty retreat. Disregarding the Mingo
advice to keep going until he reached Virginia, Washington stopped and
built Fort Necessity. After an argument, the Mingo decided Washington was
a fool and left him. The French quickly surrounded the tiny fort and
forced its surrender, but Washington was released after unknowingly
signing a confession of murdering a French ambassador on a mission of
peace. The incident started the French and Indian War (1755-63).

That same month, a conference was held at Albany between representatives
of the British colonies and Iroquois League to prepare for a war with the
French. Needing British help to defend Ohio from the French, the Iroquois
had ceded it to Pennsylvania with the exception of the Wyoming and
Susquehanna Valleys which they were determined to keep for the tribes of
the Covenant Chain. Unfortunately, an Albany trader managed to get some
minor Iroquois representatives drunk, and when they sobered up, they
discovered they had signed an agreement with Connecticut (which by its
charter also claimed northern Pennsylvania) land companies opening the
Susquehanna and Wyoming Valleys to settlement. Rather than achieving unity
for war against the French, the conference ended with the Iroquois furious
at the British for the fraudulent treaty, Pennsylvania protesting
Connecticut's attempt to claim its territory, and the Delaware still
living on the upper Susquehanna threatening to kill any white who tried to
settle in the Wyoming Valley.

Despite their long history as a French ally, the Caughnawaga attended the
Albany Conference as part of the Iroquois delegation and agreed, on behalf
of the Abenaki and Sokoki to remain neutral in the coming war.
Unfortunately, they were unable to keep this promise for either themselves
or their allies. The French had also been busy organizing their allies and
the result was an alliance known as the Seven Nations of Canada (Seven
Fires of Caughnawaga) composed of the Iroquois mission villages on the St.
Lawrence (Caughnawaga, Kanesatake, Oswegatchie, and St. Regis); the
Abenaki at St. Francois and Bécancour; and the Huron at Lorette. Although
the Caughnawaga clearly dominated this coalition, they were over-ruled by
the pro-French majority after the outbreak of war. The Caughnawaga were
not as active as in previous conflicts, but the Christian Onondaga from
Oswegatchie attacked German Flats (Herkimer, New York) in 1758.

When news of the Iroquois cession of Ohio at the Albany Conference reached
the Ohio tribes that fall, they decided the British were also enemies and
the Iroquois could no longer be trusted. Only a few Mingo remained loyal
to British. Despite the fact many Caughnawaga had moved in with the Mingo
during the early 1750s, there was no sudden switch of allegiance to the
French. The Mingo remained hostile to the French who had difficulty in
1755 supplying their forts or finding allies in the area willing to defend
them from the British army being assembled under General Edward Braddock.
The policy of the Mingo, Shawnee, and Delaware in Ohio was one of
belligerent neutrality towards both sides. As Braddock's 2,200-man army
began its march towards Fort Duquesne, the French were forced to bring in
600 native allies from Canada and the Great Lakes. This, however, proved
more than adequate. Braddock disdained using savages as scouts, and in
July just south of Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh), he blundered
into an ambush in which almost half his command was killed, including
himself.

News of the defeat was met with stunned disbelief in the British colonies
followed by anger. The Shawnee and Delaware picked an incredibly bad time
to send a delegation to Philadelphia to protest the Iroquois sale of Ohio.
Pennsylvania seized and hanged them, and the Shawnee and Delaware
retaliated with raids on frontier settlements in Pennsylvania, Maryland,
and Virginia. The Delaware still under Iroquois control on the upper
Susquehanna did not participate at first but, by December, 1755 had joined
the war in defiance of the Iroquois council. The Susquehanna Delaware made
peace in August, 1756, but the Delaware, Shawnee and Munsee continued
fighting and by the end of the year more than 2,500 colonists had been
killed. Another peace conference was held with the eastern Delaware at
Easton, Pennsylvania in October, 1758. The Treaty of Easton paid for
Delaware lands taken by New Jersey, and Pennsylvania unilaterally
renounced all claim to land west of the Appalachians that had been ceded
by the Iroquois at the Albany in 1754. The news soon reached Ohio, and
when General John Forbes captured Fort Duquesne in November, the Delaware
and Shawnee offered no resistance.

In the hysteria following Braddock's defeat in 1755, a Seneca war party
enroute to attack Catawba in the Carolina had been treacherously killed by
Virginia militia. Coupled with anger over the fraudulent land cessions
exacted at the Albany, many of the Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga joined the
French, and for the first time in almost two centuries, Iroquois found
themselves on opposite sides of a war. Only the Mohawk of Hendrick
(Soiengarahta) and the Oneida stayed loyal to the British. This was mainly
due to William Johnson, an Irishman who had immigrated to New York in 1734
and established himself as a planter and fur trader in the Mohawk Valley.
After taking a Mohawk wife (Molly Brant), Johnson became known to the
Iroquois for honesty. He not only learned their language but mastered the
ritual courtesies of their councils. The Mohawk called him Waraghiyaghey,
meaning "Big Business."

The Mohawk were no less angry by the drunken cession of the Wyoming Valley
than other Iroquois, but because they trusted Johnson, they answered his
call in 1755 to help New York and New England militia take the French fort
at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. Leading 200 of his Mohawk warriors,
Hendrick was killed in this battle. The Caughnawaga were also there with
the French, but when they saw Mohawk fighting for the English, they
suddenly retired and sat out the fight. Despite the loss of their sachem,
the Mohawk did likewise leaving the French and British to fight each
other. There was be no violation of the Great Law of Peace that day. The
Mohawk also accompanied Johnson in the capture of Fort Niagara in July,
1759. Quebec fell that September, and Montreal surrendered the following
year. After these British victories, the war in North American was over.

British soldiers occupied the remaining French forts in the Ohio Valley
and Great Lakes, but rather than leave after defeating the French, they
stayed as an occupying army. Fort Duquesne was rebuilt as Fort Pitt and
garrisoned with 200 men. William Johnson was appointed the British Indian
agent in the north and wanted to continue the French system of dealing
with Native Americans through trade and annual presents. Unfortunately,
the British commander in North America, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, despised
Indians - friend or foe. Ignoring Johnson, Amherst ended annual gifts to
treaty chiefs in 1760, increased prices on trade goods, and restricted the
supply - especially firearms, powder and rum. By 1761 the Seneca were
passing a war belt calling for an uprising against the British, but only
the Delaware and Shawnee responded. Johnson discovered the plot from the
Wyandot during a meeting at Detroit with tribes of the old French
alliance. Other belts were circulated by Caughnawaga and Illinois, but it
took the religious movement of Neolin, the Delaware Prophet, to provide
the unity for a general revolt.

Neolin taught rejection of the white man's trade goods (especially
whiskey) and a return to traditional native ways. Pontiac, chief of one
the most important tribes of the old French alliance, the Ottawa at
Detroit, seized on this and began to secretly organize an uprising. When
it hit in 1763, the Pontiac Rebellion caught the British entirely by
surprise, and six of nine forts west of the Appalachians were captured
during May. However, the failure to take the other three ultimately caused
the revolt to fail. The Iroquois were still healing their recent divisions
and tried to remain neutral, but the Seneca joined the uprising and
besieged Fort Niagara. A British column trying to reach the fort was
ambushed followed by a massacre of prisoners and wounded, but Niagara
held. The Mingo and Wyandot captured Fort Venango in northwest
Pennsylvania, but the siege of Fort Pitt by Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo
dragged on, and the British defended it by introducing a smallpox epidemic
with gifts of infected blankets and handkerchiefs to their besiegers.

While continuing the siege, the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo also attacked
the Pennsylvania frontier killing 600 colonists. Pontiac had reserved for
himself the responsibility of taking Fort Detroit but failed to achieve
surprise when an informer warned the garrison. As the forts continued to
hold and the British recovered from their initial surprise, the rebellion
began to unravel. After a three-day battle at Bushy Run, Colonel Henry
Bouquet broke the siege of Fort Pitt. Allies began to desert, and Pontiac
was forced to end his siege of Detroit and retreat west to Indiana where
he still had a considerable following among the Kickapoo and Illinois.
While reorganizing, he asked the French at Fort de Chartes on the
Mississippi for help, but the commandant refused and urged him to stop. In
November Amherst was replaced by Thomas Gage who listened to William
Johnson. Gage restored trade goods to previous levels and lowered prices.

Badly shaken, the British issued the Proclamation of 1763 halting all new
settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Seneca ended their siege
of Fort Niagara and were forced to sign a humiliating surrender. Pontiac
signed a peace in 1765 but was disgraced as a result. He never returned to
Detroit and moved to northern Illinois in 1766. Three years later he was
murdered by a Peoria (Illinois) during a visit to Cahokia. William Johnson
emerged from the Pontiac Uprising in control of British Indian policy in
North America. His influence was so great among the Iroquois councils that
the Mohawk were literally his private army, and at his urging in 1763,
they had destroyed the Delaware village of Kanhanghton as punishment for
their support of Pontiac. After the war, almost all of the Delaware in the
Susquehanna Valley left and moved west to Ohio.

Whites replaced them, and settlers from Connecticut finally took advantage
of the drunken treaty signed by the Iroquois at Albany in 1754 and began
to occupy the Wyoming Valley - conflicting claims of Connecticut and
Pennsylvania resulted in pitched battles between rival frontier militias
in 1768. With the whites fighting among themselves for the land, it was no
place for Indians, and the remaining tribes of the Covenant Chain
(Nanticoke, Saponi, Tutelo, Munsee, Delaware, and some Iroquois) left the
Wyoming Valley to crowd into the rapidly shrinking Iroquois homeland in
New York. With the French gone and the British controlling Canada,
Caughnawaga lands were also being overrun by settlement in 1763. After
their village at St. Francois had been destroyed by Rogers Rangers in 1759
during the French and Indian War, the Sokoki had found refuge with the
Caughnawaga at St. Regis.

By 1763 white settlement had taken the Sokoki's lands, as well as those of
the Caughnawaga, along the shores of Lake Champlain. With St. Francois
already overcrowded, there was no place for these people to go. The
Caughnawaga had good reason to consider joining the Pontiac rebellion in
1763 but stayed out and in the end advocated peace. They may have done
better if they had fought. William Johnson supported some Caughnawaga
claims to the upper Champlain Valley but ruled the Proclamation of 1763
did not apply to lands claimed by the Sokoki in Vermont and New Hampshire.
The Proclamation was doomed from the moment it was issued, and the
resentment it created among the colonists was one of the main reasons for
the American Revolution. Frontiersmen seeking new land simply ignored it
and moved into native lands, and the British, trying to avoid a
revolution, were powerless to stop the encroachment. Under pressure from
the Americans to open more land for settlement, the British decided in
1768 to rescind the Proclamation and negotiate a new treaty with the
Iroquois for Ohio.

Although other tribes were invited to send representatives, Johnson
adhered to custom and negotiated only with the Iroquois. With the French
no longer a threat, the League had lost much of its previous advantage
and, with white settlement encroaching upon its own homeland, was anxious
to sign an agreement to protect themselves. Johnson (himself a land
speculator) had no trouble in getting them to part with their claim to
Ohio in exchange for a defined boundary of their lands. The Treaty of Fort
Stanwix in 1768 ceded much of western Pennsylvania and the the entire Ohio
Valley. This self-serving agreement was between two parties who could no
longer control the people they represented - the British for the Americans
and the Iroquois for the Ohio tribes - and condemned both to a fifty-years
of war which claimed more than 30,000 lives.

The Iroquois attempt to protect their homeland brought them nothing but
grief. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix Treaty not only destroyed their
credibility as a representative of the Ohio tribes, but many Iroquois lost
faith in the League's decisions. Shawnee protests to the Iroquois council
went unanswered except for a threat of annihilation if they opposed the
agreement. The Shawnee turned to others for support and, in what proved
the opening move towards the western alliance, made overtures to the:
Illinois, Kickapoo, Wea, Piankashaw, Miami, Potawatomi, Wyandot, Ottawa,
Delaware, Mascouten, Ojibwe, Cherokee and Chickasaw. Meetings were held at
the Shawnee villages on the Sciota River in Ohio in 1770 and 1771, but
Johnson was able to prevent the formation of an actual alliance by threats
of war with the Iroquois. Frontiersmen flooded across the mountains into
the new lands. By 1774 there were 50,000 whites west of the Appalachians
and more coming. The British closed many of their forts in the area and
withdrew their garrisons as an "economy measure."

Most of the first settlements were along the Ohio River between Pittsburgh
and Wheeling. Isolated by Johnson, the Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo in the
area stood alone against the Long Knives (Virginia and Pennsylvania
frontiersmen) and got along as best they could with them, but the tension
was building. Problems began after treaties signed with the Cherokee
opened the way for more settlement in Kentucky. Virginia sent survey teams
into the area in 1773, and there were clashes with the Shawnee. Virginia
militia took over abandoned Fort Pitt early in 1774 to use as a base in
case of war. There was more fighting that the spring, and believing a war
had already started, Michael Cresap and a group of vigilantes attacked a
Shawnee trading party near Wheeling in April killing a chief.

The following month, another group of frontiersmen massacred a band of
Mingo at Yellow Creek (Stuebenville, Ohio). Among the victims were the
wife, brother, and sister of Logan, a Mingo war chief. The Shawnee chief
Cornstalk wanted to avoid a war and visited Fort Pitt to ask the
Virginians to "cover the dead," but Logan went to the Shawnee-Mingo
village of Wakatomica and recruited a war party. While Cornstalk was at
Fort Pitt talking peace, Logan took a gruesome revenge by killing 13
settlers near the mouth of the Muskingum River. Lord Dunmore's (Cresap's)
War (1774) began in June. Logan assured colonial officials in July the
killing was over, but by then whites had gathered into forts waiting for
help to arrive. Spurning both Iroquois and Delaware offers to mediate,
Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, brought a large army of militia west
to the Ohio.

With the Iroquois and most of the Delaware remaining neutral, the Shawnee
and their Mingo allies sent a war belt to the Detroit tribes who refused
it. William Johnson kept the Miami and other possible allies at bay with
threats of Iroquois intervention if they helped the Shawnee. Dunmore's
militia destroyed Wakatomica and five other villages, and in October was
gathering at Point Pleasant (West Virginia) on the Ohio River for a second
invasion. The Shawnee and Mingo launched a sudden attack. The battle
lasted most of the day with heavy casualties on both sides, but the
Shawnee were finally forced to withdraw. A month later, they signed a
treaty relinquishing all their claims south of the Ohio River which opened
Kentucky for settlement.

The American Revolution (1775-83) began the following year with fighting
at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts just as the first Kentucky
settlements were established at Harrodstown and Boonesborough. The Quebec
Act of 1774 had made the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes part of Canada and
brought Virginia and Pennsylvania to the point of revolution. With the
outbreak of war, the British ceased being a bystander and began urging the
Shawnee and Mingo to attack the Americans. Some tribes chose neutrality,
but by arguing the Americans intended to take their land, the British
succeeded with the Detroit tribes, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe. They also got
an alliance between the Shawnee and Cherokee (Chickamauga) war factions.
In July, 1776 the Chickamauga attacked two forts in the Carolinas
provoking American retaliation against all Cherokee. Meanwhile,
Chickamauga and Shawnee war parties roamed through Kentucky attacking
Americans.

In the midst of an impassioned speech to incite the Mohawk against the
Americans in 1774, William Johnson suffered a stroke and died a few days
later. His duties as the British Indian commissioner passed to his
son-in-law, Guy Johnson, while his wealth and 100,000 acre estate went to
his son John - both were loyalists. Neither had as much influence over the
Mohawk as Sir William, but they had the help of his protégé, the Mohawk
sachem Joseph Brant (Thayendanega), brother of Sir William's Mohawk wife,
Molly. With the outbreak of war, both the British and Americans tried to
win the support of the Iroquois. The League listened respectfully to both
arguments, but although they recognized the new United States in 1776,
their decision was to remain neutral. They even ordered the Shawnee to
stop attacking Americans in Kentucky. Nothing stopped, but by this time
the League had gotten used to its orders being ignored. If the League had
been able to remain neutral, it probably would have survived the war.
However, this was not to be. The "Great Peace" ended in 1777, and the
Iroquois League was destroyed two years later. The Caughnawaga and the
other members of the Seven Nations of Canada also intended to remain
neutral in the beginning but were drawn into the war during which its
members fought on both sides.

William Johnson had treated Joseph Brant like his own son and sent him to
an English school on Connecticut. Rising to leadership among the Mohawk
afterwards, Brant was convinced the Iroquois would lose their land if the
Americans won and strongly opposed the council's decision to remain
neutral. After accepting a captain's commission in the British army, he
visited England in 1775 and returned in time to participate in the Battle
of Lang Island in 1776. Angered by the American arrest of Sir John Johnson
(William's son) for loyalist activities, Brant defied the Iroquois council
and led his warriors north to stop the American attempt to capture Canada
during the winter of 1776-77. Opposing Brant on the council were the
Oneida and Tuscarora who, because of the missionary Samuel Kirkland,
favored the Americans. The crisis came with a British effort in 1777 to
cut New England off from the other colonies by seizing the Hudson Valley.

The plan called for three British armies to meet at Albany. General
William Howe was to come north from New York City, while General John
Burgoyne marched south from Montreal and Colonel Barry St. Leger moved
east through the Mohawk Valley. St. Leger's role in the campaign which
provoked a crisis on the League council since he would need their
permission to move through the Iroquois homeland. Unfortunately, a recent
epidemic had deprived the council of several important sachems. Still
opposed by the Oneida and their sachem Skenandoah, Brant was able to win
over the Seneca and Cayuga. Unable to resolve the differences between the
members, the Onondaga extinguished the council fire and joined the
majority going to the British. The Iroquois League had come to an end,
with each tribe free to go its own way. The "Great Peace" which had
prevailed among the Iroquois for centuries ended shortly afterwards at
Oriskany.

Joined by Iroquois and other native allies, St. Leger moved down the
Mohawk valley towards Fort Stanwix (Fort Schuyler to the Americans). On
August 6th, 1777 American and British forces met at the Battle of
Oriskany. Oneida warriors with the Americans and Mohawk and Seneca
warriors with the British fought and killed each other. St. Leger's defeat
at Oriskany and his failure to take Fort Stanwix forced him to abandon his
part in the offensive and return to Canada. In October the Oneida served
as scouts in the American victory over Burgoyne at Saratoga - the turning
point of the Revolutionary War. They rendered further service that winter
by bringing food to Washington's starving army at Valley Forge and in May,
1778 participated in the Battle of Barren Hill under the command of
Lafayette. Despite the setbacks at Saratoga and Oriskany, the British and
Iroquois launched a series of raids against the frontier that put the
Americans on the defensive in New York and Pennsylvania during the summer
and fall of 1778.

In July Brant's Mohawk attacked the Cherry Valley on the upper Susquehanna
in New York. He followed this with a raid on the settlement at Minisink
Island on the Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey which
left several farms in flames. The real damage, however, was done during
his retreat when only 30 of the 150 militia pursuing escaped an ambush. At
the same time, McDonald's tories and native warriors hit settlements in
Northampton County and the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania. In
September Brant struck again - this time at German Flats in the Mohawk
Valley. Forewarned, the Americans rushed to Forts Dayton and Herkimer
where they sat helplessly inside while smoke rose from their burning
homes. Two weeks later the Americans destroyed Brant's villages at
Unadilla and Oquaga on the Susquehanna. Brant joined forces with Tory
Rangers commanded by Walter Butler and attacked the Cherry Valley for a
second time in November. Known as the Cherry Valley Massacre, the attack
took the Americans by surprise. Homes were burned, 30 settlers killed, and
71 prisoners taken. An assault on the American fort killed 16 soldiers,
but the British and Mohawk withdrew the following day when reinforcements
arrived.

Brant became known as "Monster Brant," but his reputation was undeserved.
Most of the killing at Cherry Valley was done by Walter Butler's men who
Brant later admitted were far more "savage" than any of his Mohawk. The
tendency towards brutality seemed to run in the Butler family. It was
Walter's father, John Butler, who orchestrated what was by far the worst
massacre in the Wyoming Valley that July. Brant and his Mohawk were not
present at Wyoming, and Butler's men returned to Fort Niagara with 267
scalps. This much death and destruction on the frontier could not be
tolerated, and during the summer of 1779, George Washington sent three
converging armies to destroy the Iroquois homeland: from the south General
John Sullivan proceeded up the Susquehanna with 4,000 troops; General
James Clinton moved west through the Mohawk Valley; and Colonel Daniel
Brodhead pushed up the Allegheny River from Fort Pitt.

Guided by Oneida scouts, the Americans brushed aside Brant's 500 warriors
and John Butler's 200 tories at the second Battle of Oriskany and in
September captured the League's capital at the Onondaga village of
Kanadaseagea. Destroying everything, the Americans burned over 40 towns
earning George Washington his Iroquois name of Caunotaucarius "town
destroyer." The Iroquois never recovered from this disaster. Their homes
and crops destroyed, the survivors spent a cold and hungry winter as
refugees in the vicinity of the British fort at Niagara. Brant, however,
enlisted a large war party that winter to punish the Oneida and attacked
their villages. Hundreds were killed in this Iroquois civil war, and the
Oneida fled to the Americans at Schenectady. They spent the rest of the
war in brutal poverty and misery but continued to serve as American scouts.

Brant was able to block an attempt by the Seneca Red Jacket to make peace
with the Americans, and the Iroquois continued to attack the frontier in
support of the British. Both Guy and John Johnson led raids into the
Mohawk Valley during summer and fall of 1780. The Butlers were also active
until Walter was killed by an Oneida warrior near Johnson Hall in October,
1781. The Americans so hated him they refused to bury his body and left it
to rot. Brant fought in the Ohio Valley during 1781 and in August ambushed
a group of Pennsylvania militia near the mouth of the Miami River
(Cincinnati, Ohio). He also tried to ambush George Rogers Clark on the
Ohio River, but Clark avoided this and reached safety at Fort Nelson
(Louisville, Kentucky). Returning east, Brant's final foray into the
Mohawk Valley was stopped at Johnstown during 1783, the last year of the
war.

The war in the Ohio Valley was almost a separate conflict from the one
east of the Appalachians and continued, despite the Treaty of Paris in
1783, with few interruptions until 1795. Shortly after the start of the
war, the British began supplying arms and paying bounties for American
scalps. The Chickamauga (Cherokee) and Shawnee launched the first attacks,
but indiscriminate retaliation by Americans drew the other tribes into the
fighting. By the time the Iroquois entered the war in the east in 1777,
the Mingo had joined the Shawnee and would remain a part of the alliance
fighting the Americans until 1794. Many of the raids against Kentucky
during this period originated from Pluggy's Town, a Mingo village located
near present-day Delaware, Ohio. In September, 1777 Fort Henry (Wheeling)
was attacked by 400 Shawnee, Mingo and Wyandot. Half of the 42-man
garrison was killed, and the war party burned the nearby settlement before
withdrawing. After the Americans built Fort Laurens in eastern Ohio in
1778, Mingo and Wyandot warriors surrounded it and kept it under siege
until abandoned as indefensible in August, 1779. A Mingo war party also
burned Hannastown, Pennsylvania in 1782. Raids and counter-raids continued
until 1783 with the Mingo and other British allies moving their villages
into northwest Ohio to distance them from the Americans along the Ohio
River.

At the end of the war, Joseph Brant crossed into Canada with almost 2,000
followers - mostly Mohawk and Cayuga but including parts of all six
members of Iroquois League as well as a few Delaware, Munsee, Saponi,
Nanticoke, and Tutelo. A second group of Iroquois settled at Tyendenaga on
the north shore of Lake Ontario just west of Kingston, Ontario. Brant
settled along the Grand River in southern Ontario on 675,000 acres given
by Governor Frederick Haldimand of Canada as compensation for the lands
the Iroquois had lost in New York. Unfortunately, Haldimand's term of
office ended before he could provide legal title. Brant went to England in
1785 to correct this, but the problem has persisted ever since. Totally
destitute after the war, Brant ultimately had to sell 300,000 acres to
feed his people (only 45,000 acres remain). From a pre-war population of
8,000, fewer than 5,000 Iroquois survived the war, 2,000 of whom had moved
to Canada.

On the Six Nations Reserve at Grand River, Brant rekindled the League's
council fire which had been extinguished in 1777. At the same time back in
New York, a second council fire was started at Buffalo Creek leading to a
question of which represented the original confederacy with its claim to
the Ohio Valley. George Rogers Clark's capture of the Illinois country in
1778 had extended the boundary of the new United States to the
Mississippi, and the Americans had no doubts about which one counted. They
informed the Iroquois in New York that they were now a "conquered people"
and forced them to sign another treaty at Fort Stanwix in 1784 ceding much
of their homeland and confirming the earlier cession of Ohio made to the
British in 1768. Brant's Mohawk and the Canadian Iroquois were conspicuous
by their absence at the signing of this treaty, and the Iroquois League
had split into two parts. The Canadian and American branches gradually
grew farther apart, until by 1803 the Canadian Iroquois were no longer
included in meetings of the American portion of the League.

After the Treaty of Paris, the British asked the Ohio tribes to stop their
attacks on Americans. In truth, neither they nor the American frontiersmen
considered the question of Ohio had been decided. As early as 1782, the
British agent at Detroit, Simon De Peyster, had urged the tribes to form
an alliance to keep the Americans out of Ohio. To this end, he brought
Joseph Brant west in 1783 as a representative of the Six Nations
(Canadian) to attend a meeting of the Ohio tribes at Sandusky. The British
did not attend themselves, but Brant's influence was important in the
formation of the western alliance. Its first council fire was at the
Shawnee village of Waketomica. After Waketomica was burned by the
Americans in 1786, it moved to Brownstown, a Wyandot village south of
Detroit.

Refusing to comply with the Paris treaty until the Americans compensated
British loyalists for their losses in the war, the British continued to
occupy their remaining forts on American territory. Of course, there was
no way the Americans could pay these, or their other debts from the
Revolution, until they sold the land in Ohio. The British were aware of
the American dilemma and let it be known to the alliance tribes they would
support them in any conflict with the Americans. When the Ohio tribes
learned of the second Treaty of Fort Stanwix signed by the New York
Iroquois in 1784, American intentions became quite clear. They also lost
faith in that part of the Iroquois League's ability to represent their
interests, while the influence of Brant and the Six Nations in Canada grew.

Unsure of how much authority the New York Iroquois still had in Ohio, the
Americans wanted to confirm the League's cession with the resident tribes.
The problem was the Americans thought of the western alliance as a British
plot -which it was - and would only negotiate with individual tribes. The
Fort McIntosh and Fort Finney treaties signed with the Wyandot, Delaware,
Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Shawnee were useless because they did not reflect the
consensus of the alliance or, in some cases, the tribes who signed. The
American position was also at odds with its frontier citizens. Most of the
alliance warriors wanted the Ohio River, not the Muskingum as the boundary
of settlement, while the frontiersmen were not going to be satisfied until
they had taken the entire Ohio Valley.

Sensing trouble, the New York Iroquois called for a meeting with the Ohio
tribes at Buffalo Creek in the spring of 1786. No one came, although
alliance representatives attended the League's meeting in July to ask for
help against the Americans. Congress, meanwhile, sold the land rights to a
New Jersey syndicate and the Ohio Company to pay war debts. Americans
flooded into Ohio and took native land as squatters making treaty
boundaries worthless. 12,000 whites were north of the Ohio in 1785, and
short of civil war, the government could not stop them. In response to
this encroachment, Shawnee and Mingo raids resumed against Kentucky. After
an inspirational speech by Brant at the meeting of western alliance in
November, 1786, a consensus formed demanding the Ohio as a boundary.
However, the alliance council also agreed to a truce until the spring to
allow its demands to reach the American Congress. For some reason, the
message did not make it to Philadelphia until July, and by that time, the
fighting had resumed.

A final attempt to resolve the dispute by treaty was made in December,
1787 when the American governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St.
Clair, called for a meeting at Fort Harmar. The tribes of the western
alliance were divided on how to respond. In the meeting of the council,
Brant demanded the repudiation of all treaties ceding any part of Ohio,
but the Wyandot wanted to negotiate and gained support from the Delaware,
Detroit Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. Brant left the meeting in disgust
and went back to Ontario deferring his role to the Shawnee and Miami. The
conference finally took place in January, 1789, and the Treaty of Fort
Harmar set the Muskingum River as the boundary of the frontier. This
satisfied no one, and the raids continued. After the Americans retaliated
against the Kickapoo, Wea, and Piankashaw villages on the lower Wabash
during the summer of 1789, the Miami and Shawnee war factions dominated
the alliance.

At this point the Americans decided to settle the dispute by force. The
alliance again asked the New York Iroquois for help. When this was
refused, the League lost whatever influence it still had with the Ohio
tribes. Little Turtle's War (1790-94) began with two horrendous American
defeats: Harmar (October, 1790); and St. Clair (November, 1791). The
Americans could not quit, because they could not afford to lose. President
Washington sent "Mad Anthony" Wayne to take command in Ohio. Wayne began
training his Legion, a large force of trained regulars to back the
undisciplined militia which had contributed to the earlier defeats. At the
same time, the Americans were making peace overtures to the alliance in
1792 through the Iroquois. Flush with their recent victories, the alliance
was in no mood to listen. At the conference, they threw the American
proposal in the fire and called the Iroquois representatives "coward red
men." The role of the Iroquois League in the Ohio Valley had definitely
ended, and they were fortunate to leave the meeting with their lives.

However, Brant and the Six Nations from Canada continued to have influence
within the alliance, but after watching Wayne's careful preparations to
destroy them, the Ohio tribes began to have doubts whether they could win.
After Wayne began his advance into northern Ohio in the fall of 1793, the
alliance council asked Brant to negotiate a peace with the Americans. The
British had reached the same conclusion and were ready to resolve their
differences with the United States. Unfortunately, this was done in
secret, and as far as Brant knew, the British would still support the
alliance if it chose to fight. He urged war, and the majority of the
alliance reluctantly agreed. In August, 1794 Wayne's Legion and the
alliance faced each other at Fallen Timbers. Driven from the field, the
retreating warriors were refused refuge at the nearby British fort. In
November the Jay Treaty was signed between Great Britain and the United
States, and the British withdrew their garrisons from American territory.
Abandoned, the alliance signed the Fort Greenville Treaty the following
August ceding most of Ohio.

The ownership of Ohio was finally decided after 40-years of war. The 1784
Fort Stanwix Treaty which surrendered Ohio for a second time did not
protect the Iroquois homeland. Over the next 60 years, it was surrendered
to a "feeding frenzy" of land speculators whose names included most of the
rich and politically powerful founding families of New York. Among the
first victims were the Oneida who had served the Americans so faithfully
during the Revolution and suffered as a result. Washington had promised
the Oneida they would be "forever remembered" for their contributions and
sacrifices and assured them their sovereignty and land rights would be
respected. Nice words, but the Oneida were living in poverty after the
war, and the United States did not compensate them for their losses until
1795. Meanwhile, the Oneida by 1785 had taken in the Christian Stockbridge
and Brotherton Indians from New England. Desperate for money to feed
themselves, the Oneida signed a treaty with New York governor George
Clinton ceding most of their original 6 million acres in exchange for a
smaller reservation.

For similar reasons, New York was able to make similar agreements with the
Onondaga in 1788, and Cayuga the year following, buying their land and
confining them to reservations. The rate at which Iroquois land was
disappearing into the hands of land speculators was one reason Congress
passed the Non-Intercourse Act in 1790 forbidding the sale of native lands
to anyone but the federal government. To stabilize the situation, the
United States signed the Canandaigua (Pickering) Treaty in 1794 to
establish definite boundaries for Iroquois. The earlier New York treaties
were acknowledged, but this failed to stop the land loss. There was enough
New York political power that federal law and treaties were either ignored
or permission to disregard them was routine. Three years after
Canandaigua, the Seneca surrendered a large tract at Big Tree. More was
sold in 1802 and 1823. By 1807 the Cayuga had sold the last of their New
York lands. Many went west to Ohio to live with the Mingo, now known as
the Seneca of the Sandusky. The others scattered to the Iroquois in New
York or crossed the border into Canada.

Only two Mohawk signed the Fort Stanwix Treaty in 1784. The others were
with Joseph Brant in Canada. Still at war with the Americans, at least in
the Ohio, the Mohawk homeland was overrun by settlement after 1783. It
seemed obvious the Mohawk were never going to get back their lands in New
York. Already forced to sell part of the Grand River Reserve in Ontario to
feed his people, Brant finally agreed to cede the Mohawk lands in New York
in a treaty signed at Albany in 1797. The Onondaga sold much of their
reservation to New York in 1822. About the same time, the Oneida had
disagreements over Quaker missions versus traditional religion. In 1822
they sold their land and half agreed to relocate to Wisconsin. The
Christian Stockbridge and Brotherton went with them. Problems with the
government purchase of land from the Menominee delayed the move, but by
1838 more than 600 Oneida were living near Green Bay. The Tuscarora also
agreed to removal, but most chose to stay in New York or move to Canada.

The final blow came with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Pressure built to
remove the remaining Iroquois from New York. The result was the Treaty of
Buffalo Creek (Treaty with the New York Indians) signed in 1838 where the
Iroquois agreed to move to southeastern Kansas. In truth, much of this
agreement never went into effect. Influential Quakers blocked its
implementation, and by 1846 only 210 New York Seneca had moved to Kansas.
In 1873 the Iroquois lands in Kansas were declared forfeited and the
rights of 32 Iroquois living there were repurchased by the government.
Seneca and Onondaga who fought the Americans in the Revolution stayed in
New York, but the Oneida had a more difficult time. After the treaty, 250
New York Oneida purchased land near London, Ontario in 1839. By 1845 their
numbers had grown to more than 400. The other 200 remained near Oneida,
New York or moved in with the Onondaga. Despite federal laws, the Seneca
continued to lose land to whites due to incompetence and corruption of
tribal leadership. Reaction to this ended their traditional system of
hereditary chiefs, and they separated from the rest of Iroquois League in
1848.

The Mingo in Ohio fought as part of the western alliance until after
Fallen Timbers, and in 1795 they had made peace with the Americans at Fort
Greenville. In 1805 the Wyandot signed the Treaty of Fort Industry ceding
the eastern part of northern Ohio which forced the remaining Mingo
villages there to relocate to northwest Ohio. The Mingo were joined in
1807 by a large group of Cayuga from New York. The continuing loss of
native lands in the Ohio Valley to Americans gave rise to the movement of
Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet. Some Mingo joined this
and fought for the British during the War of 1812 (1812-15). Most Mingo,
as well as the Iroquois League in New York, remained neutral. Late in the
war, the Seneca declared war on the British after they had occupied Grand
Island in the Niagara River which was claimed by the Seneca. As a result a
British attack burned the Tuscarora settlement near Niagara Falls, New
York.

After the war the Mingo who followed Tecumseh into Canada signed the
Treaty of Indian Springs (1815) allowing them to return to the United
States. Two years later, the Ohio tribes surrendered their last Ohio lands
at Treaty of Fort Meigs (Maumee Rapids) in exchange for reservations.
There were two groups of Mingo at the time - the mixed Shawnee-Seneca band
received a reserve at Lewistown, Ohio, while the Seneca of the Sandusky
took a 30,000 acre reserve on the Sandusky River north of Wyandot.
Treaties signed at St. Marys the following year actually added to these
holdings. The 100-year Mingo residence in Ohio came to an end in 1830 with
the passage of the Indian Removal Act. In February 1831 the Seneca of the
Sandusky signed a treaty agreeing to removal to the northeast part of the
Indian Territory adjacent to the Western Cherokee.

In July Shawnee-Seneca band at Lewistown also agreed to move to the same
area. In 1857 they allowed 200 Kansas Wyandot to settle at the Neosho
Agency. Unfortunately, these Wyandot were pro-Union, and in June, 1862
Confederate soldiers invaded the Seneca Reserve forcing the Wyandot, as
well as many of the Seneca, to leave. The Seneca spent the Civil War in
refugee camps on the Marais des Cygnes River in eastern Kansas. Giving in
after the war to demands by Kansas for the removal of all Indians from
inside its borders, the government in 1867 negotiated a treaty with the
eastern tribes which had been removed to Kansas during the 1830s. Most
moved to Oklahoma, including the 200 Seneca who had arrived from New York
in 1846. The treaty separated the mixed Shawnee-Seneca band, and the
different groups Seneca of Sandusky merged to form the modern
Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.

The Caughnawaga signed only one treaty with the United States. This was at
New York City in 1796 on behalf of the Seven Nations of Canada
relinquishing their claims to land in New York with the exception of 36
square miles on the New York-Quebec border which was preserved as the St.
Regis Reservation. St. Regis was also excluded from the removal provisions
of the 1838 treaty and exists today as the the only Mohawk reservation in
the United States. The Caughnawaga and other Canadian Iroquois were active
during the 1800s as trappers in the western fur trade with both the Hudson
Bay and Northwest companies. Mohawk from near Montreal were regularly
employed as voyageurs and laborers for the long canoe routes from Montreal
to the Mackenzie Delta and Pacific Coast. The fierce competition between
these two companies ended when they merged in 1821.

Besides trapping, the Iroquois had frequent contact with western tribes
and frequently intermarried with them. In 1840 a Caughnawaga Iroquois,
Ignace Lamoose, was responsible for Jesuit missionaries being sent to the
Flathead and Kalispel in Montana. Several Iroquois employees of the Hudson
Bay Company settled in the Willamette Valley of Oregon during the 1840s.
Beginning about 1800, the Northwest Company convinced Iroquois families
from the St. Lawrence River to move west and settle in Alberta. The
Canadian government established a reserve for the Iroquois band of Chief
Michel Calihoo near Villeneuve in 1877. Parts were sold to whites in 1903
and 1906. After the band surrendered its aboriginal status in 1952, the
reserve was broken up into individually owned plots.

The ten-year period between Fort Stanwix and Canandaigua (1784-1795) was
probably the lowest point for the Iroquois people. From there, however,
they began a slow recovery which has continued to the present. In 1799 the
Seneca Handsome Lake (Ganiodayo) had a spiritual vision which not only
changed his life but the Iroquois history. Afterwards, he preached the
"Kaiwicyoch" (Good Message) and founded the Longhouse religion - a blend
of the traditional Iroquois values and Christianity. The religious values
he espoused were so universal and commendable that Handsome Lake even
received a letter of appreciation from President Thomas Jefferson. Because
there was also an element of accommodation in his message, many Americans
interpreted the Longhouse religion as the Iroquois coming around to their
way of thinking. However, this was definitely not the case, since Handsome
Lake strongly opposed Christian missionaries among his people. The
Longhouse Religion carries a strong message of tolerance, but it is first
and foremost a traditional native religion.

As such it has been responsible for the Iroquois being able to retain much
of the their culture and tradition despite adversity and defeat. There is
still division as to whether the council fire belongs with the Six Nations
in Canada or the Onondaga in New York (New York finally returned the
wampum belts of the Confederacy to the Onondaga in 1989). Many Iroquois,
however, still consider themselves a distinct nation from either Canada or
the United States. Canada imposed an election system on the Six Nations in
1924, but many Iroquois tribes have retained their traditional system of
hereditary leadership. The Iroquois opposed American citizenship when it
was finally extended by the Congress in 1924 to all Native Americans in
the United States. They also fought the Wheeler-Howard Indian
Reorganization Act (1934) which would have required federal approval of
their tribal governments.